Chester Carruthers was 15 when he was reported missing from Harrison, Maine, on August 13, 1976. His mother had not seen or heard from him for about two weeks before filing the report. For five years there was no public sign of him until May 13, 1981, when a neighbor’s dog found a human skull in woods behind a house off Route 35 about a quarter-mile from Chester’s home. Police recovered buried remains that dental records later identified as Chester’s.

An autopsy determined Chester had been shot once in the head not long after he disappeared, and the case was treated as a homicide. Investigators faced very limited physical evidence and little public attention, and although a potential suspect was at one point identified, investigators never had enough to make an arrest. The lead Maine State Police investigator continued work on the file after retirement; the case remains open and unsolved.

Did anyone in the Harrison area remember Chester or notice anything unusual around Route 35 in August 1976?