The Murder of Shirley McAvoy (Maine)

In late summer of 1990, a mother in central Maine seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, leaning on friends and trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. Then, shortly before a scheduled court date related to her pending divorce, she simply disappeared. Days turned into weeks, and small, unsettling details began to surface—things that didn’t fit with the idea of someone who’d chosen to leave. What started as a missing persons case slowly transformed into something far more disturbing, stretching well beyond the quiet town where Shirley was last seen. More than 35 years later, investigators are still trying to identify a mystery man believed to know exactly what happened to Shirley. This is a story about a young woman whose life was brutally taken and the decades that followed as investigators, family members, and forensic experts worked to overcome outdated science and finally confirm what so many had suspected all along.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Kylie Low?

  There's something about being out in nature that makes the world feel a little quieter. But sometimes, even the most peaceful places have stories that refuse to stay hidden. That's what my friend Delia Diambra explores on Park Predators. Each week, she investigates true crime cases set against the world's most beautiful landscapes. Going beyond the headlines, Delia speaks with loved ones, digs through records, and sometimes visits the places where the stories unfolded. If you're ready to uncover the mysteries that linger beneath breathtaking scenery, listen to Park Predators every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:40Kylie Low?

  In late summer of 1990, a mother in central Maine seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, and she was leaning on friends and trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. Then, shortly before a scheduled court date related to her pending divorce, she simply disappeared. Days turned into weeks, and small unsettling details began to surface. Details that didn't fit with the idea of someone who'd chosen to leave. What started as a missing persons case slowly transformed into something far more disturbing, stretching well beyond the quiet town where Shirley was last seen.

• 1:24Kylie Low?

  More than 35 years later, investigators are still trying to identify a mystery man believed to know exactly what happened to Shirley. I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Shirley McAvoy, on Dark Down East.

• 1:50Kylie Low?

  32-year-old Shirley McAvoy was trying to find a new path forward in life. Everything she knew for the last 13-plus years was falling apart. She and her husband, Brian McAvoy, were already separated, and next would be divorce papers. According to reporting by Brenda Seekins for the Bangor Daily News, Shirley was living alone with her two dogs in Pittsfield, Maine, while her two young daughters were in the custody of their father. It wasn't an easy adjustment, and friends said that she dealt with bouts of depression for everything she'd been going through. To fill the quiet and loneliness of that summer in 1990, Shirley did a little redecorating at her home on Berry Road,

• 2:33Kylie Low?

  putting up curtains for some extra privacy in the dining room, and adding a matching bedspread to bring the look together. She also spent some time with friends and made new ones. In fact, on the night of August 8, 1990, Shirley reportedly had some of those new and old friends over for a gathering at her house. The following day, August 9, Shirley opened her door to find a police officer standing there, papers in hand. He was there to serve her with the divorce documents from Brian. They had a court date the very next day for a hearing related to their pending divorce, and possibly to discuss the custody arrangement for their children. Maybe the heaviness of the court date would have been balanced out for Shirley,

• 3:17Kylie Low?

  because they'd also be celebrating one of her daughter's birthdays. But August 10 came, and the hearing began, but Shirley didn't show. She missed her daughter's birthday, too. For Shirley's friends, the absence was certainly odd, but they tried to rationalize it in their minds. Maybe Shirley just needed to get away and deal with her problems somehow. Maybe she left to get some space from it all. So the days passed, and then a week, and Shirley's home sat empty. There were no gatherings or visits with friends, no sign of the friendly neighbor on Berry Street.

• 3:55Kylie Low?

  By the end of August, Shirley's estranged husband Brian started to worry. There are unconfirmed details that a letter tipped Brian off that something might be wrong, but we'll get to that later. What you need to know now is that it was Brian who went to the Pittsfield Police Department in mid-August of 1990, about a week or two after she was last seen, to report Shirley missing. According to reporting by Steve Eaton for the Morning Sentinel, police learned that Shirley's car was also missing. It was a red 1990 two-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, license plate number 26269P. The vehicle was registered in both Shirley and Brian's names.

• 4:38Kylie Low?

  Shirley's two dogs, a five-month-old husky shepherd named Max and a two-year-old long-haired dog named Nikki, were nowhere to be found either. From the publicly available source material, it's hard to tell what, if any, investigative measures were taken immediately after that missing persons report was filed. If local police made little effort to track Shirley down, that wouldn't be too surprising, knowing how the cases of missing adults were typically handled in that era, and sometimes even now. Shirley was an adult. Her car was missing. Her dogs seemingly vanished too. Those facts alone suggested a relatively benign scenario where she just packed up and left one day. But what was discovered inside Shirley's home

• 5:23Kylie Low?

  almost two months later painted a very different and chilling reality. In early October, with still no sign of her, Brian wanted to get Shirley's home winterized. If that term is unfamiliar to you, here in Maine and many other New England and northern states, if you're expecting a house will be vacant through the winter months and you won't be running the heat, winterization is imperative to prevent the pipes from freezing and bursting. Brian said that he wanted the house ready for Shirley if and when she came back to it. As part of that, the local police chief accompanied three people over to the house on October 1st so they could start by cleaning up the refrigerator that was probably filled with rotten food by that point.

• 6:08Kylie Low?

  One source reports that this cleanup crew included someone described as Brian's girlfriend, while another states it was a friend of Shirley's, Brian himself, and someone else. Either way, the police chief allowed the group inside to begin their work. Not long after, a call came into the police station asking for assistance on Berry Road. The group at Shirley's home had found a substance and they wanted someone to take a look.

• 6:38Kylie Low?

  Shirley's friend, who wished to remain anonymous, said that she was the first one to notice it. A strange discoloration on the floor that almost looked like burn marks. The couch was also moved out of its usual spot and positioned on top of the marks on the floor. When they pushed the couch back, what it revealed made Shirley's friend feel sick. She thought it looked exactly like dried blood, a lot of it. The chief returned to Shirley's home, and what he found there led him to call Maine State Police. Yellow crime scene tape went up around Shirley's home on October 3rd while the Criminal Investigation Division prepared to process the scene. K-9 units sniffed the ground outside

• 7:23Kylie Low?

  as crime scene technicians and detectives photographed the stain and collected items around the house. Maine State Police wouldn't get into specifics at first, saying only that things inside the house made them suspicious. And they stopped short of saying there was confirmed foul play connected to Shirley's disappearance. But when the analysis of the items removed from Shirley's house finally came in, the police dropped their vague hints. A state police sergeant stated that they'd found a significant amount of human blood inside Shirley's home, including a two-foot by two or three-foot stain on the living room carpet. Although it hadn't yet been typed,

• 8:05Kylie Low?

  they were operating on the assumption that the blood belonged to Shirley. At least one source states that blood was also discovered in the bathroom. Another says there was blood spatter on the walls. Local and state police partnered on the early investigation, questioning friends and neighbors and family members to determine when exactly Shirley was last seen. The woman who noticed the out-of-place sofa said she was the last person to see Shirley.

• 8:34Kylie Low?

  The friend told Steve Eaton of the Morning Sentinel that none of Shirley's clothes were missing from the house, but something else was: Shirley's new bedspread. Those home redecorating projects were all messed up. The curtains she hung up for privacy in the dining room were inexplicably moved to the living room. While Shirley's dogs had been unaccounted for since Brian first reported her missing, a search of her house revealed signs that at some point, her dogs were likely locked in one of the rooms. The door was covered in scratch marks as if they were trying to get out, and they'd gone to the bathroom on the floor. That was a red flag for those who knew Shirley well, because she treated those dogs like they were her children.

• 9:17Kylie Low?

  Prior to the discovery of the human blood in Shirley's home, details of her disappearance and the description of her car had not been entered into the National Crime Information Center database. But now, with the potential of a crime playing a part in her unexplained absence, that information finally made it into NCIC. A search of Shirley's license plate and other info kicked back to out-of-state incidents involving her red, cutless Supreme. The first incident was a reported hit-and-run accident in Boston, but rather than leading to Shirley, it only made the trail to find her more elusive. The other driver in the collision reported that a man had been driving the car when

• 10:02Kylie Low?

  it rear-ended him just outside the tunnel on the Southeast Expressway. The male driver handed over the insurance card that was in the vehicle, which had Brian McAvoy's name on it. The other driver didn't see a woman inside the Cutlass. However, he remembered the male driver saying something like, "I'm never going to drive in Boston again," before he fled the scene of the accident. Who was this guy behind the wheel of Shirley's car? As detectives started talking with the people closest to her, a shadowy, inconsistent picture began to form of a mysterious stranger who seemed to just appear at her home one day.

• 10:43Kylie Low?

  They knew him as Jerry, a name that may have been as slippery as the details of his life.

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• 11:27Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist: Stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:06Kylie Low?

  A friend of Shirley's said that she met a man who had stayed with Shirley for a few days before she disappeared. He was introduced as a relative and had been there for about five days, as far as the friend knew. However, the nature of Shirley's relationship with this man is described differently depending on the source. Maine State Police said that the guy known to be staying with her on and off was actually Shirley's boyfriend, or at least someone with possible romantic interest or involvement with her. He wasn't a suspect, at least not yet, but police certainly had some questions for the guy. Tom Berg reports for The Journal Tribune that investigators developed a composite sketch of the man based on the description from the other driver

• 12:51Kylie Low?

  involved in the hit-and-run accident in Boston, that driver's sister, who was also in the car, and someone who had seen the guy around town in Pittsfield. The description of the man driving Shirley's vehicle during that hit-and-run accident in Boston and the man believed to be staying with her on and off before she disappeared, they were both very similar. So here's what we think we know about the mystery man. His name might be Jerry, and he could be 5'10" tall and about 180 pounds, between 33 and 37 years old in 1990, with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, slightly crooked front teeth, and pockmarks on his face. He is believed to have a southern accent. He might have worked in construction around the Millinocket area.

• 13:36Kylie Low?

  He also may have stayed with relatives in Saco, Maine. Information about Jerry suggested he was in the middle of a divorce from a woman in Massachusetts who was pregnant with twins. And as of 1990, he may have had a 12-year-old daughter. Investigators stated that Shirley possibly met the man either at a bar in Millinocket or at Funtown USA, a theme park in Saco. Some reports say that the man was from Old Orchard Beach. Another source states that, according to investigators, Jerry may have previously worked in Oklahoma and Virginia and was possibly born in Kentucky. The man may have had access to an older charcoal-colored car covered in rust spots,

• 14:19Kylie Low?

  but other reporting states that he didn't actually have a car of his own. At least two composite sketches of this Jerry fellow have been publicly released since 1990. Both are posted on Dark Down East's social media platforms and at darkdowneast.com. According to reporting by Sharon Mack for the Bangor Daily News, the release of the composite sketch generated about 50 phone calls, but investigators weren't optimistic about the tips. The second hit in the NCIC database also fizzled out quickly. Maine State Police looked into a report that Shirley's car was pulled over as part of a routine traffic stop in Florida on August 14. That would have been after she was last seen,

• 15:03Kylie Low?

  but before her description and the car details were entered into NCIC. So by the time investigators caught up with Florida authorities to ask about this traffic stop, memories were already fuzzy. It turns out that the plates on the car in question were the same as Shirley's license plate number, but the Florida officer who stopped the car did not make note of which state the plates were from. The officer also couldn't recall if the car was a red cutlass like Shirley's. After nearly two months since she was last seen, police were left with few concrete details to follow. They had blood in Shirley's house, a car accident in Boston, and a traffic stop in Florida they couldn't confirm was actually Shirley's car,

• 15:48Kylie Low?

  and a mystery man named Jerry, but no Shirley. The investigation felt scattered, pieces of a puzzle stretched across states with no clear way to connect them. But that changed when the case took its most unexpected and heartbreaking turn hundreds of miles from home.

• 16:09Kylie Low?

  On Tuesday, November 20, 1990, a hunter was perched on his truck's tailgate scouting for deer in a wooded area about five miles off I-95 behind Todd's Tavern Market on Route 623 in Spotsylvania, Virginia, when he saw something that looked like a white ball on the surface of the forest floor. What he discovered when he walked closer was that it wasn't a ball, but a human skull and skeletal remains. The body was wrapped in what the hunter described as a curtain, with the person's feet bound by a cord. Jill Higgins reports for the Kennebec Journal that investigators later commented that the body was actually found wrapped in a quilt

• 16:51Kylie Low?

  that was heavily stained with, quote, "bodily fluids," end quote. Police did not confirm if that meant blood. However, they did comment that the person's feet were bound with a Venetian blind-type cord. Shirley's dentures were imprinted with her name, and that marking was the first indication that the remains belonged to the missing main woman. Jewelry at the scene was also consistent with Shirley's jewelry. Found with the body were two distinctive rings, a 1977 Biddeford High School class ring with Shirley's initials, and a mother's ring with two red and one green stone. Dental records later confirmed the identification.

• 17:33Kylie Low?

  Her remains weren't buried, and they were found not very far into the woods off the road, but it was still a very secluded area. According to reporting by Eileen Mead for the Freelance Star, police theorized that given the location, the person who left her there was probably familiar with the area. Investigators planned to search the location again in the coming days to see if they could find the remains of Shirley's dogs. However, subsequent searches did not produce any sign of the dogs, Shirley's car, or a potential murder weapon. With the discovery of Shirley's body, the mystery man went from wanted for questioning to an actual suspect in her death.

• 18:15Kylie Low?

  Publicly, Jerry appeared to be the primary focus of the case in terms of suspects. Police had stated more than once that Shirley's husband, Brian, was not considered a suspect in the case. So with Jerry MIA, no confirmed sightings of Shirley, and no sign of her dogs or her car, the case seemed to stall. Months slipped by with little to report, until a break finally came. Police recovered Shirley's car, also out of state, in April of 1991. A Virginia paper reports that it was confiscated near the Georgia-Florida border. However, main authorities weren't immediately ready to disclose any specifics about where the car was located.

• 18:59Kylie Low?

  They did share that it had been repainted, presumably to a color other than its original red hue, so it would not match the description of the stolen vehicle that was reported to NCIC and ViCAP. After thoroughly searching the car for any evidence that could lead to the identity of Jerry, or more information about what happened to Shirley, police confirmed that they'd found a bloodstain, but didn't elaborate on who it may belong to. Anything else recovered from the vehicle—fingerprints, fibers, hair—that's not public information.

• 19:32Kylie Low?

  Later reporting suggests that the trail of Shirley's car reached all the way to a Holiday Inn in St. Augustine, Florida sometime in late 1990. Sources say that the car was stolen from that parking lot, repainted, and then possibly sold before it was recovered in Derry in Georgia in 1991. Sharon Mack reports that after seizing the car, police reportedly interviewed a possible suspect in Georgia, but that individual was later released. In the end, the car that once seemed like a key to unraveling Shirley's disappearance offered far fewer answers than anyone hoped. It had traveled across multiple states, changed hands, changed colors, and passed through

• 20:16Kylie Low?

  too many unknowns to yield a clear timeline or a clear suspect. Whatever story it might have held about Jerry, about who last drove it, or about what happened to Shirley, remained locked away in evidence that could have been too degraded, or too limited, or simply too inconclusive to move the case forward. With nothing definitive enough to tie a suspect to the vehicle, investigators were left with the same maddening reality then as now. The car wasn't the breakthrough they needed. As of 1991, police believed that someone killed Shirley in her home in Pittsfield in August of 1990 and drove her body out of state to Virginia where she was found.

• 20:58Kylie Low?

  That was the only conclusion investigators could publicly make from the investigation at that juncture. Main state police were transparent about the fact that each lead they'd chased so far was nothing but a dead end. They needed something to spark new attention and expand the reach of the investigation, because if the killer crossed state lines, then the call for tips needed to cross state lines too.

• 21:30Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist. Stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:08Kylie Low?

  As of October 1991, Shirley's family and Maine State Police had reportedly tried to get her story on the TV program Unsolved Mysteries. They felt that since her case followed a trail along the entire eastern seaboard, some national exposure on a television show could generate new information. However, the producers at Unsolved Mysteries weren't interested. State Police later commented they felt like the show only wanted cases that were close to conclusion or had an identified suspect. Shirley's met neither of those criteria. While her story didn't make it onto Robert Stack's list, it was featured in a paperback book titled Murderers Among Us by Stephen G. Mishu and Hugh Ainsworth.

• 22:53Kylie Low?

  If those names ring a bell, it's because their landmark interviews with Ted Bundy became the backbone of Netflix's hit docu-series, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. That project helped launch Netflix's entire Conversations with a Killer franchise. It shows just how influential Mishu and Ainsworth's reporting has been in shaping some of today's most-watched true crime storytelling. The Maine State Police spokesperson at the time said the book was viewed as an opportunity to reach new potential audiences that might have knowledge of Shirley's murder. Since the book would be in airports across the country, it had the potential to land in the hands of someone who recognized the composite sketch of Jerry. The spokesperson, however,

• 23:37Kylie Low?

  would not comment on the accuracy of the information contained in the book beyond the information directly attributed to the Maine State Police. I tracked down a yellowed and torn copy of this book. Based on what Maine State Police said about the book back in the early 90s, and comments Shirley's friends and family have made about it since, the details revealed in the chapter about Shirley should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, there are a few additional pieces of information about the case in the book. The book states that Shirley invited some people to her place for a party on August 8, and the mystery man was among the guests.

• 24:17Kylie Low?

  Other people in attendance said that he told varying stories about who he was and what he did. He told one person his name was Jerry, but others reportedly knew him as Dawn. To some, he said he worked at a mill in Millinocket. To others, he said he was an Air Force mechanic from Virginia. Shirley supposedly told people that the situation between her and Jerry, or Dawn, was not sexual, and he slept in a different bedroom at her house. Now it's the book that revealed the actual last person to see Shirley was a process server who showed up on her doorstep to serve her with paperwork related to the divorce. That was around 5:00 PM on August 9.

• 25:00Kylie Low?

  That contrasts with what the unnamed friend of Shirley said in earlier newspaper articles about being the last person to see Shirley.

• 25:09Kylie Low?

  I think this discrepancy could be chalked up to an error in reporting, or rather, either author not having the full scope of the timeline due to the open nature of the case. And for what it's worth, a local police officer later confirmed that he in fact served Shirley twice with protective orders related to her divorce in the days before her disappearance. The first time, he said he saw a man that maybe looked like the composite sketch, though the person he saw had long hair. The second time, the officer didn't see the man, but he also didn't go inside the house. Also, according to the book, Shirley's neighbors saw a man they believed to be Jerry driving away from Shirley's house in her Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on August 10, 1990.

• 25:55Kylie Low?

  Now remember that unconfirmed red flag I mentioned at the beginning of this story? The one that might have been the first clue to Brian that something was wrong with Shirley? Here's where that comes in. According to Mishu and Ainsworth's book, on August 19th, Brian received a bill for damage in a car accident in Boston. The other driver in the collision had mailed the repair estimate to the address from the insurance info he got from the driver, which was Brian's name and address. Brian reportedly tried calling Shirley to ask what the heck this was all about, but she didn't answer. A letter to the editor published in The Morning Sentinel from an author who identified herself as a friend of Shirley's passionately disagreed with how the book characterized her.

• 26:40Kylie Low?

  Main State Police Detective Dale Lancaster also said after the book was published that the authors took "literary license" with some of the things they said about Shirley and her lifestyle. Brian McAvoy, too, spoke out about the characterization of his wife and said the description was slanderous and completely bogus. I reached out to Stephen Mishu, hoping to ask him about the reporting process for the book, but I haven't heard back from him at the time of this episode's recording date. His co-author Hugh Ainsworth passed away in 2023. So, given the backlash and reviews from people who knew Shirley best and love her most, the comments made about her in that book don't need repeating. Despite the criticism, the hope at the time was that the book might finally do

• 27:25Kylie Low?

  what months of fragmented leads and jurisdictional hurdles hadn't. Push Shirley's story far enough into the public eye that someone, somewhere, might come forward with the missing piece. With copies circulating through airports and bookstores and newsstands nationwide, Main State Police believed the book could reach the kind of transient, cross-state audience that her case desperately needed. People who might have seen Shirley, her car, or the man known as Jerry. But even with the additional exposure, no new viable tips emerged. No one recognized the sketch, to the point of publicly naming a suspect. No one connected themselves to the trail of her car. And no one stepped forward with information that could move the investigation

• 28:10Kylie Low?

  out of its standstill and forward to an arrest. For all the anticipation surrounding the book's release, it ultimately did little to illuminate the truth. In the end, Shirley's case remained exactly where it had been before the book hit the shelves: unsolved, unanswered, and still waiting for the breakthrough that never came. In 1995, Shirley's case was brought back into the national spotlight when it was featured on the Fox Network series "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol." The episode, which aired on November 17, 1995, generated a surge of interest. Dozens of calls poured in from viewers across the country, reporting possible sightings of Jerry from as far away as California, Texas, and Florida.

• 28:53Kylie Low?

  But while the broadcast widened the net of potential leads, Shirley's family was deeply unhappy with the show's reenactment, calling it "distasteful." Nearly a decade later, in August of 2004, the family made another push for answers, announcing a $10,000 reward for information, leading to the imprisonment of Shirley's killer. The reward came alongside news that a local author named Horace P. Landry had taken up Shirley's case. He studied journalism at Colby College and Yale University, and worked as a writer and editor at multiple publications throughout his career. Post-Newsroom, Horace wrote two fictionalized murder mysteries set in Maine, and he wanted

• 29:37Kylie Low?

  to try his hand at solving a real case. He'd gone about interviewing Shirley's family and friends, hopeful and determined to make headway in a case that had stymied police for years. Shirley's family members were grateful for his dedication, and seemed to view his efforts more positively than the authors and producers who had come before him. But sadly, Horace passed away three years later, in 2007. If he ever wrote a book or started writing a book about Shirley, I haven't yet found evidence of that. Despite renewed attention and financial incentive, no tip provided the breakthrough Shirley's family and police had spent years hoping for.

• 30:19Kylie Low?

  Shirley McAvoy is remembered first and foremost as a loving mother. Friends said she was incredibly close with her two children and struggled deeply with being separated from them during the divorce. She filled her days with community and connection. She was a devoted volunteer at Manson Park Elementary School and a friendly face in her neighborhood, even often piling some of the kids who lived nearby into her car for swimming trips to Newport. By every account Shirley was outgoing and warm. One friend described her as "a wonderful person with a heart of gold, who would help anyone who needed help without any questions asked." That generosity of spirit, that willingness to open her home and her heart, is what makes

• 31:02Kylie Low?

  the events of August 1990 so especially painful to reckon with. Her daughter Christina was only 12 years old when her mother disappeared. Brian did what he could to shield his children from the worst details, but the truth found its way to them anyway, delivered by a classmate on a playground that her mother had been found not alive, but discarded. It was a moment that changed the course of her childhood. Years later, in 2004, Christina voiced what her family had carried for so long. Quote, "We just want this guy behind bars, and we want to know why he did it." End quote. That guy, the man known only as Jerry, remains one of the enduring mysteries of Shirley's case.

• 31:46Kylie Low?

  I want to revisit what we think we know about him one more time. Because if there's even a small chance this reaches someone who knows something, I'm going to take it. Jerry had been staying with Shirley off and on about five days, according to one friend, and depending on who was asked, he was either introduced as a relative or understood to be Shirley's boyfriend. Investigators built a composite sketch from people who had seen him in connection with Shirley or the hit-and-run in Boston. He was described as 5'10", about 180 pounds, in his mid-30s, with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, possibly a southern accent, slightly crooked front teeth, and pockmarks on his face.

• 32:29Kylie Low?

  The details of his life, if they are true, paint the picture of a man drifting through states and stories, working construction near Millinocket, staying with relatives in Saco, possibly going through a divorce from a pregnant wife in Massachusetts, perhaps with a daughter of his own. Some reports suggest he had roots in Kentucky or ties to Oklahoma and Virginia. Now, what continues to stand out even after all these years is how Virginia repeatedly emerges as a significant point in this case, suggesting a possible connection investigators were never fully able to clarify. Shirley's remains were discovered in a secluded area of Spotsylvania, Virginia,

• 33:12Kylie Low?

  that authorities believed would likely be known to someone familiar with the region. Additionally, some accounts indicate that Jerry may have previously worked in Virginia or claimed ties to the state through military service. Taken together, these details make Virginia more than just the location where Shirley was found. They suggest to me it may be central to understanding who Jerry is and where he may have come from. Now, for listeners who live in Virginia or are originally from there, this is a direct request. Please look at the composite sketch of the man known as Jerry, posted at darkdowneast.com, and consider whether you recognize him. If you can, share the sketch within your community

• 33:57Kylie Low?

  or with people who lived in the area in 1990. Your awareness may help provide the critical information needed to move this case forward. Shirley welcomed people into her life with trust and openness, and it is devastating to consider that this kindness may have placed her in harm's way. And it is equally heartbreaking that more than 30 years later, the man who may hold the answers about her last hours, about why a mother never came home, has never been identified. For families of victims in unsolved cases, grief is not a moment, but a long, shifting landscape. Seasons pass, children grow up, houses are sold, and yet the questions remain untouched,

• 34:41Kylie Low?

  suspended in time. But there is still reason to hope. Advancements in DNA testing could one day shed new light on the evidence collected from Shirley's home, or the Oldsmobile recovered in Georgia. The passage of time, too, can shift loyalties and dissolve the silences that once protected hard truths. People age, relationships change, and long-held secrets sometimes become burdensome enough to reveal. Shirley's story has survived because those who love her have never surrendered to silence. And even decades later, time may still be working in her favor, wearing down the barriers

• 35:21Kylie Low?

  that once hid the truth, and giving her case a real chance to finally be solved. If you recognize Jerry, or have any information about the murder of Shirley McAvoy, please contact Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit Central at 207-624-7076, extension 9. You may also submit a tip using the form linked in the description of this episode. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram, @DarkDownEast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for

• 36:06Kylie Low?

  those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names, or their stories, get lost with time. I'm Kylie Low, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. I think Chuck would approve.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But soon they'll find it.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff. And they said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is.

• 36:55Speaker 06

  I saw him, Violet. Backhanded her. Pow!

• 37:01Speaker 07

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season Two, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.