Fifty years ago the body of a 19-year-old woman was dumped in a culvert on Sherman Lake in Newcastle.
Florence E. Lauze’s killer to this day has never been identified and without a miracle never will be.
As tragic as her death is, she’s just one of 69 Maine victims on the Maine State Police list of unsolved homicides.
Unfortunately the list isn’t getting any shorter. Unsolved murders go cold after they fall out of the headlines.
Not only does time take its toll on the public’s interest in keeping the cases active, but there are only so many detectives to handle the continual flow of ongoing killings.
Murder never takes a holiday.
And every time a new killing occurs in Maine, the cold cases get even colder.
Detectives have to investigate the most recent murders first, and as that occurs, the unsolved cases get successively pushed further back in the file drawers.
The Maine Wire’s curiosity about unsolved murders was triggered by the recent killing of a paddleboarder in Union.
As the unsolved July 3 case of paddleboarder Sunshine Stewart of Tenants Harbor stretched into two weeks, the public and media began wondering “is this case ever going to get solved?”
If not, it would end up as really nothing more than the latest statistic on the state’s antiseptic list of mysterious murders.
Many following the case wondered, will Sunshine Stewart get shelved? Will she become No. 70?
Finally, thirteen days after Stewart’s bludgeoned body was found, cops finally announced they’d found their guy – a 17-year-old Mic Mac Cove camper who became their prime suspect.
Deven Young of Frankfort was arrested July 16 and booked on a murder charge.
Meanwhile, as that case wends its way through the court system, 69 homicide victims lie in their graves, their families still awaiting justice that in all honesty will likely never come.
And there are over 150 missing persons cases still open as well.
But focusing the public’s attention on a single midcoast case may offer a wisp of hope not only that one but others statewide.
The Aug. 21, 1975 edition of The Lincoln County News reported that “The body of a young woman was recovered from Sherman Lake in Newcastle, after it was discovered by someone going fishing.”
A state medical examiner determined the cause to be strangulation.
Maine State Police circulated photos of the dead woman in an attempt to figure out who she was.
She was soon identified by relatives after a sketch was published in newspapers.
Florence Lauze’s family suspected she had been hitchhiking to her father’s Back Meadow Road home in Damariscotta when she was murdered on August 16, 1975.
“She may have been en route to see him when she was killed,” Maine Deputy Attorney General Richard Cohen said at the time.
“If this was a stranger homicide (a random serial killer who gave her a ride) I’m afraid the case will never, ever be solved based on the publicly-available information,” says Redditor Miggovortensens.
Other 50-year unsolved cases:
– Ellen Choate, 20, disappeared in 1975 enroute from Philadelphia to Bangor. The teacher’s decomposed body was discovered in Newport two years later.
– Robert McKee’s bullet-riddled body was found at McNally’s Texaco in 1975 in Newport. McKee was a teacher moonlighting as a gas-station attendant.
Choate/McKee, both teachers, both dead in Newport, 1975, no apparent connection other than they were both likely murdered 50 years ago in Maine.
– Joseph Baillargeon, 79, was found dead of a homicide in 1968 near the side of the road Biddeford, making his the longest-unsolved case on the list.
Got a tip? Call Maine State Police at (207) 624-7143.You may also report information using the leave-a-tip form.
