Justice remains on hold for five Aroostook County homicide victims.
These cases, including three in the small Route 11 town of Masardis, are among Maine’s 71 unsolved homicides, according to Maine State Police.
For most people the brutal killings in The County have faded from news accounts and the victims have been forgotten in the busy day-to-day activity of life.
It’s the investigators, families and friends who still cling to the hope that a clue, a tip, a remembered encounter will finally fill in the remaining puzzle pieces to solve the crime.
“I am a firm believer that there are people who have very important information and for whatever reason they haven’t shared it,” said Lt. Darrin Crane, head of the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit North. “Perhaps they are afraid or don’t think it’s valuable. We urge the public to come forward.”
Homicide anniversaries are a good time to highlight the case, he said. And there’s an anniversary coming up.
On Sept. 28, it will be nine years since Kenneth Zernicke, 58, was found dead just before 10 p.m. inside his Caribou home at 5 Lower Lyndon St. by firefighters. His home had been burned and the state medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide.
A neighbor said that her husband saw a vehicle leave the residence shortly before witnessing a huge ball of fire blowing out the home’s windows, according to news accounts. Police conducted informational interviews at roadblocks for clues, but the case remains unsolved.
On the sixth anniversary of his death, Zernicke’s brother, Joseph Bourgoine posted a $10,000 reward for information on the death of his brother.
“I know somebody knows. In six years, they must have said something to somebody,” Bourgoine said in a BDN interview at the time, adding that it took him six years to raise the money.
He was unable to be reached for this story.
The Masardis homicides included Louis Alexander, 60, and Joseph Savitch, 58, in a double killing.
On August 15, 1997, their bodies were discovered buried in a shallow grave in a wooded area in Masardis. The men, both from the Fall River area of Massachusetts, had been missing since 1994. According to the Maine Medical Examiner’s office, they were shot to death.
Also known as Joe the Animal and Miami Beach Louie, they were notorious criminals in Maine and Massachusetts. Some local observers were convinced their killing was a mob hit, according to several news accounts, but police records have not confirmed that information.
Both men were indicted in 1994 for a string of Aroostook County burglaries that allegedly netted $1 million in property and cash taken from County homes and safes.
A bear hunter found their bodies.
Also in Masardis, retired Ashland school teacher Lila Drew was found dead on the floor of her Route 11 home on March 18, 1977.
She was bludgeoned to death by a heavy wooden chair and her son found her the next day, according to investigators.
News accounts pointed to two suspicious coffee cups on the kitchen table. Neighbors said she would never leave dirty cups. Some feared she was having coffee with someone she knew.
On Feb. 6, 2008, Darrel Smith, 56, was alone in his sawmill on Thomas Road in Woodland near Caribou when he was allegedly robbed and shot to death, according to police. Smith owned and operated Smith’s Sawmill and Logging which was adjacent to his home.
Shortly after the four-year anniversary of his death, the reward for information was $60,000.
“We are still actively pursuing any and all leads,” state police Detective Micah Perkins said at the time. “As of yet, though, there have been no arrests.”
Early in the investigation, police were searching for the driver of a small, dark pickup truck that was seen on Thomas Road around noon the day of the shooting.
Anthony Bear, 50, was last seen on August 22, 1992, leaving the Tobique Indian Reservation in Perth-Andover New Brunswick. His body was located by hunters on October 3, 1992, in the Town of Fort Fairfield. His death was ruled a homicide and an autopsy revealed that he died of a head injury.
Bear’s case was a difficult one because key witnesses recanted earlier statements and refused to come to Maine from New Brunswick to testify, Crane said.
Crane said newer cases, like Zernicke’s, have a greater chance of being solved. The longer a case goes unsolved the harder it becomes to unearth evidence, he said.
As time passes, witnesses, suspects and family members pass on and sometimes there is nowhere else to look, Crane said, pointing to the unsolved case of Emile Andrew Marten, which was closed a few years ago because there was nobody left connected to it.
Marten was last seen alive on April 10, 1963 about 100 yards from his cabin at Clifford’s store near Macwahoc when he stopped for food, according to a BDN account. Two days later he was found in his cabin, lying face down with his hands and feet trussed, and a large bath towel wrapped around his head.
Marten died from broken blood vessels when his skull was fractured after being hit on the top of his head four or five times with a sharp-edged instrument, police said.
Maine State Police and Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department investigated his death and two suspects were questioned but their stories differed in the telling. They were eventually arrested in Connecticut but never extradited to Maine.
Over time, people died and clues faded, Crane said.
Before closing the case, investigators did an in depth review and found there was no one left. The decision to close a case is usually left to the attorney general’s office if there is no chance for prosecution, he said.
Advancing technology has helped solve older cases.
The 1985 death of an infant found naked in a Frenchville gravel pit went unsolved until DNA linked the baby to her mother Lee Ann Daigle. Maine State Police arrested the then 59-year-old Massachusetts woman in June 2022, after a grand jury indicted her on one count of intentional, knowing or depraved murder.
“Baby Jane Doe is a great example of this new technology,” Crane said. “It’s kind of exciting to think about what technology might be here 20 years from now.”
He urges anyone with information on any of these cases to contact the Maine State Police Houlton Barracks.
