The man found dead at a home in Lamoine last week is believed to be one known locally for his beliefs about government overreach and his apparent unofficial campaign for Hancock County Sheriff.
Though he hasn’t been officially identified by the state medical examiner’s office, several town officials and neighbors said they believed that Neil Douglas Salisbury was the man who was found dead at his longtime Shore Road home on Oct. 3.
State police are investigating the death as a homicide but declined to divulge further details. A police spokesperson said officials needed DNA for confirmation, but the man has no known living relatives nearby.
Salisbury, 71, was known to be steadfast in his belief that he shouldn’t need to have a driver’s license or pay property taxes. He was confirmed deceased in court documents the day after the body was found, prompting the district attorney’s office to drop a pending case from July stemming from driving without a license.
He lived at the Shore Road home in Lamoine since at least 1984. Salisbury had signs on his lawn promoting his run for Hancock County sheriff. The campaign does not appear to have been an official one or at least not very widespread. He is not on the November ballot, and people who knew him said he had no previous law enforcement experience.
What prompted him to put up the signs wasn’t clear to his decades-long neighbor Tammy Kelley.
“If it was just a joke, I don’t know,” she said.
Kelley said she wasn’t close with Salisbury, but everyone in the neighborhood was aware of his feelings toward state and local regulations, chiefly his disregard for driver’s licenses and property taxes. Most of his friends had died over the years, and she said his son moved out months ago.
On Monday, Kelley had just gotten home from a week-long trip and said she wasn’t around when officers were called to Salisbury’s residence last week. She got a call from Salisbury’s ex-wife, who hadn’t been able to get through to Salisbury or their adopted son.
His ex-wife, who lives in Minnesota, declined to comment.
Salisbury’s son is currently incarcerated at the Hancock County jail for allegedly driving under the influence in late September. The jail told the Hancock County District Attorney’s Office on Oct. 4 that Salisbury was deceased and that the son requested a furlough to attend to his father’s final arrangements. District Attorney Matthew Foster could not confirm that the deceased was Salisbury.
The son’s attorney said he had no information about Salisbury’s case.
Records show Salisbury was adamant about his rights, which he felt were infringed upon by everyday governmental operations.
Lamoine Board of Selectmen meeting minutes from 2013 showed that Salisbury believed God owned the land and he was just the caretaker and shouldn’t be expected to pay a tax bill that had been sent to his home.
A 2014 article by the Ellsworth American noted Salisbury’s gripes with the government. The weekly newspaper wrote that he and his friend Richard Wayne Kane believed that property taxes were unconstitutional, the government shouldn’t issue marriage licenses and that they shouldn’t be penalized for not having driver’s licenses.
Salisbury had taken his stance on driver’s licenses all the way to the state’s highest court.
In 2017, after being convicted on charges connected to driving an unregistered vehicle without a license, Salisbury appealed his conviction. He contended that his right to travel had been improperly limited, an argument the State Supreme Judicial Court rejected.
Stu Marckoon, the Lamoine town administrative assistant and a neighbor of Salisbury, said there was an order in town hall that Salisbury wasn’t allowed to enter the town offices unless he had an appointment due to past volatile behavior at the office.
Marckoon was convinced that Salisbury was the man found at the home, as he was the only person living there and hadn’t been seen in weeks. Detectives had also been asking about Salisbury.
Salisbury had largely kept to himself over the years and eschewed other everyday items such as credit cards. He instead would use prepaid debit cards, according to Kelley.
Kelley said Salisbury didn’t have a lot of interactions with neighbors. He would sometimes shoot guns and have fires, which would annoy the neighborhood.
There was no answer at Salisbury’s home on Monday and several notes taped to the door showed that UPS had unsuccessfully tried to deliver packages there.
Signs for his apparent run for office were still up in his yard, driveway and on a tree across the street. One said “no victim” and “no crime” on it. It also listed a phone number that went unanswered.
Police said their investigation into the death is ongoing and have asked for people to report any information about the case to the authorities.