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Unsolved homicides in York CountyKtref *11K 12. 1994, Louise /as found murdered nebunkport home with her grand*L atherine Dalv, andf V' t t-’i1end. w riiiamgussa. Prior to her death.cuzzo suffered trauma to arms, back and legs.Further details oi her murder have never been formally released to maintain the integVnt\ of the investigation.• Maxine Bitomski was : ind murdered in her homelan. 16, 1993 at 3:15 p.m. oi. C olonial Road in Kitten bx t grandson. Bitomski was last n alive by her granddaughter ring the evening hours on ' n. 15, 1993. A suspect has K en interviewed.• R'l -v Anne ( onsalvi was : 1 nown exotic dancer whose ■ dv was found on lulv 25. at 1:25 p.m. in Berwickonsarv1 j inc.i y n n.‘I*. • jr.- * A j ilass. ]t• red out of state and her bode• sposed of in Berwick.* Sean I) ( 1 »nwax was ast seen on Ian. 16, 1991 at aornish reside nee/motorcycle4•hop selling handguns. Con wav• : •i tcdh left that residence at Y) p.m. on foot to purchase- •, r. (on wa\ s body xvas dis-xered lt;*n lan. 23, 1991 by man walking his doe in theM. JiP. ods m New field. Multipleopects have been interviewed.(n April 20. 1992, Susan Hannah was reported missing lop two days by her mother. Hannah had been living with ; i mother since she separated irom her husband, Hannah was last seen alive at The Whaler Bai in (!d ()rchard Beach bvIT' ^ployees on April 19, 1992 m. ! lannahs remainsovcred on Nov. 14,tlx*ufa logging: 117 in ;/■npTcjjenpmmmmmtt has beenpit er v i e• Makolm Hobbs lived alone nr an ilj§ farmhouse in NortHfcF lit rwick He was found b\ a friend an|| neighbor on Oct. l6, 1997 at 7 16 p.m. Hobbs was locatcpnear the main entrance #f his home, as if lie had lethis assailant inside. It appears robbery was the motive; some ; Hocks were missing f rom theresidence. |i2I72S8:in2 ih'JCHSCll 11• Vincent La Yopa had prob km#vvith tenants and also had a volatile relationship with his girlfriend Kennehunk Police 1 !♦ pond*, cl to a domestic dis-pute involving La Vo pa and his girlfriend on Nov^^^l985. La Vopa was last seen retrieving his mail on Nov. 21985. La i;i . opas bod) was discovered parti|lly covered with snow on! rec. 7. 1985 in the woods inArundel. Suspects have beeninterviewed,• (’haries Mace was last seenive on July 28., 1974, beingforced into a car in Portsmouth, N.H. His body was found onSept. 23, 1974. off the Betty Welch Road in Kitterv. There£ lt;4are no suspects in this case.• Thomas Napier xvas found floating in the Saco River on Feb. 20, 1994 at the Maine Lnergx Recover) plant. The autopsx revealed that Napier had drowned, and there was no ‘.tgn of am trauma to the body.W 4 •During the investigation, information had been obtained that Napier was involved in a fight with another man in the back-vard of 24 Bradlev St. in Lyman.» 4 mSuspects have been interviewed.• Marv C. Olenchuk xvas last seen alive on Sunday, Aug.9, 1970. about 200 vards from4her home, at approximately 5 p.m. She was standing beside a maroon car. posciblv a 1967Chevrolet. The driver of thecar was described as a white male, mid-30s, and wearing dark clothes. On Aug. 22, 1970. Olenchuk’s bodv was found in a barn at the Parsons Lstate on Wentxvorth Street, undei txvo feet of loose hav bv4 *a Kennehunk Police officer.The barn is 10 miles from the point where she may have beenabducted.• Ashley Ouellette, a 15-year-old girl from Saco, was found lying in the middle of the Pine Point Road in Scarborough by passing motorists on Feb. 10. 1999 at 3:57 a.m. Ouellette was last seen aliveat approximately 2 a.m. at a home in Saco. She was allowed to spend the night there; how ever, by morning, Ouellette had disappeared and was notseen again until her body wasfound m the road. (Ouellette’s death occurred in Cumberland Countv.)• Michael Sanborn was found shot to death in Sanford on Sept. 16, 1985 at 7:23 a.m.I he murdei xxas determined tlt;» be execution style. Thebody was located lying nextto his vehicle in a parking lotat the Providence Automationlt; ornpany in the AdamsIndustrial Park in Sanford. Sanborn had a drug-related his-torx' and had been doing main-tenance work at the factory.4Suspects have been interviewee.• Bessie Selek was struck and killed on April 20, 1999 at 10:30 p.m. while walking on Route 202 in Lvman. It is believed thesuspect that hit Selek was a former boyfriend. The suspect has been interviewed.• On the evening of )ulv7 1978, Mary Ellen Tanner attended parties in a wooded section of Route 9 in Kennehunk and at the Kennebunk Beach. Tanner left the Kennebunk Beach gathering in the company of friendsand was dropped off at theintersection of Routes 9 and 35 m Kennebunk at approximately 11:30 p in Tanner said she wasgoing to hitchhike home from that location. On July 9, 1978, Tanner’s bodv was discovered4in Grade Evans Airfield in Lyman. Several suspects have been interviewed.• On July 2, 1989, Pamela Webbs 1981 Chevrolet pickuptruck was found abandonedon the Maine Turnpike in Biddeford. The passenger side rear tire was flat and a spare tire was leaning against the tailgate. There were blood stains on the pavement on the passenger side of the truck and earrings near one of the blood stains. Webb’s dog \x as in the front of the truck. A turnpike ticket xvas found inside the truck indicating Webb entered the turnpikein Augusta at 9:52 p.m. on July 1, 1989. Webb xvas headed to Mason, N.H. to visit her bov-4friend. The boyfriend reported Webb missing on July 2, 1989 at 10:09 a.m. Approximately 100 people called the Maine State Police to report seeing Webb’s truck broken down, but no one xvas able to provide descriptions of vehicles or people near the truck. On lulv 18, 1989,4decomposed human remains were found in Franconia, N.H., which were subsequently identified at Webb’s.• Rafeal Rasado xvas shot and killed at his home onGuinea Road in Biddeford during the earlx morning hours of June 9, 2004. The theft of drugs and or money appears to be the motive. Several suspects have been interviewed.• The bodv of WendyMorello was discovered on a side road in York on April 13, 2004. She was last seen in Worcester, Mass. Her death isconsidered to be suspicious.• I he body of RichardJoseph Albert, 33, was found on April 17, 1972 in a wooded area near the shoulder on the Maine Turnpike in Saco. Albert and another inmate had escaped from the New Hampshire State Prison on Nov. 25, 1971 and were still on the run at the time of his deathMISSING PERSONS• In June 2. 1971 at about 10:30 a.m., 3-year old Douglas Chapman was reported missing bv his mother. He was last seen playing by a sand pile approxi matelv 25 vards in front of his/I - Is- :residence. His mother reported that she was in the house talking on the phone, and his father was at work. There was no signof a struggle, and no signifi cant evidence was found at the scene.• Angel Antonio Torres was reported missing by his family on May 24. 1999. Torres was in the Saco, Biddeford and Old ()rchard Beach area at the time )f his disappearance. Foul playlt;IS susCases Remain ColdFROM PAGE Atforefront now, she said in an prior interview. “Someone will show up to work each day and their sole focus will be puttingthese cases to rest.The bill was one of the highest pi iorities of the Legislature’s judiciarv com-S; If By lj£r '■'If-mittee, said state Sen. Linda Valentine, P Saco, senate chair of that committee.During a public hearing in February she said: “1 heard18 ’u'ifrom parents of murder victims, social workers, Deputy Attorney General William Stokes and Maj. Chris Grotten of the Maine State Police. The message was clear: If we want to be able to solve these crimes and bring the killers to justice, we need more investigators who can locus their skills solely on solving these crimes.Although the bill passed and was supported and signed into law bv Gov. Paul LePage,4funding for a forensic scientist and two additional investigators was not.Last week, the Maine Office of the Attorney General sub-4mitted an application to the U.S. Department of Justice’sa pared-down cold case unit.If the state receives the maximum provided by the grant $300,000 - it would still be less than the $400,000 to $500,000 requested to launch *he unit.Instead of the three new positions mandated by the bill, there would he only enough funds to hire one new investigator and a hall time forensic scientist.“Ideally,” said Maine State4Police Lt. Brian McDonough.“we had hoped lor the funding requested in the bill. However, he said, “anv addi-4tiona) resources is more than welcome.”Attorney C ieneral Janet Mills, whose office would run the cold case unit, said she’s uncertain when the state will learn whether it will receive federal funding.It could be weeks orrFor all of these older cases, said Mills, “The challenge is time. Time to pour through all the old files. Time to find where there might still be evidence to test.”Valentino said she is fairly Ramona Torres, mother confident that the federal grantThe clouddoesover usnor goof Angel Antonio Torres, who went missing in 1999months. she said.Currentlv, her office has4a single prosecutor who is responsible for investigating cold cases and bringing them to trial. The position was originally funded through the fed-eral government's American Recovery and Reinvestment■UPAct and is now funded bv theftstate.Even with this minimal effort, from 2001 through 2013, 12 defendants have been brought to trial in cold cases, said Mills, with 10 cases dating from the 1970s through the 1980s.Currentlv, she said, a case4dating back to 1976 is pend-ing.“This is the oldest, coldest case prosecuted in Maine.” she said.Txvo years ago. Garv4 CSanford Raub xvas arrested in Seattle for the murder ofBlanche Kimball. The 70-vear-0old woman was found stabbed to death inside her Augusta home on lune 12, 1976.Raub was arrested in October 2012 after his DNA xvas taken during a mock chewing gum survey set up bywill come through, noting that Maine’s congressional delegation supports it.Earlier this week, the state’s U.S. representatives, Democrats Chellie Pingree and Michael Michaud, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder expressing their support. They wrote that the grant would allow the state to hire more people to review and renew investigations into cases with the highest probability of being solved.Overall, Maine has an excellent record in solving homicides, said McDonough.“Our solvability rate and conviction rate is 95 percent or higher, he said.The national average is between 62 and 65 percent, according to the August 2012 issue of “The Police Chief”magazine.However, said McDonough, I'd like to see no cases go unsolved.’He said he’d liked to provide closure for the families of Ashley Ouellette, Mary Ellen fanner, Antonio “Angel” Torres and the families of all 120 murder victims and missing people whose cases have gone cold.Despite the lack of police manpower and publicity devoted to these older cases, the families don’t forget.[ he cloud over us does notaAs illustrated bv the4Kimball case, for many coldgo away,” said Ramona Torres. “We continue to hope that someday our son’s remains willcases, said Mills, collecting and he found and brought to usso we can give him a properburial, just as you or vour fam-/ / /ily would do for your child....4 4We go on. But he’s always in inv mind.”is an important factor in bringing them toa resolution.“DNA is the most valuable evidence in a crime,” said McDonough.That’s why the federali §grant that would fund an extra forensic scientist and pay for DNA analysis is needed, said Mills.Staff Writers Liz (iotthelf and Jeff Lagasse contributed to this story. Staff Writer Dina Mendros can be contacted at 2H2-I535, ext. 324 or dmen-droslt;8jour naltribune.com.Information provided bythe Maine State Police
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Biddeford Journal Tribune Weekend
Biddeford, Maine, US
Sat, May 31, 2014
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