Page 10 — THE PORTLAND DAILY SUN, Saturday, April 23, 2011
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there that knows something’ CASE from page one
dream of the one that got away still bothers him. Crowd-sourcing being what it is these days, he set up a “Facebook Causes” page a couple of weeks ago. There, the case is rehashed, and the family begs for any information to be passed on. “There has to be somebody out there that knows something,” said Cady. Cady is working in his retirement, as folks do these days, but he took some time on Wednesday to chat with me about the page and the case. He is the equipment manager for the P ortland Pirates, and with them being in the pla yoffs this week, his time was at a premium. The details of the case were just that important to him. Here’s what police say they know so far: Moulton got into a stolen 1963 Blue Cadillac , driven by her friend Lester Everett. He had been planning on heading to Florida. Everette and Moulton picked up another passenger in P ortland, named Reid P erley. He convinced them to take the long route to Florida, taking him back to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. That is 300 miles in the opposite direction. “They ended up in Smyrna and Mars Hill, Maine. [They] were seen pic king potatoes in the week or so that followed. That is when things begin to fall apart.” said Cady. Moulton was seen there by several residents , but there the trail lies cold. “We’re pretty sure she w as alive until the fi rst of November, but after that...” said Cady. Lester Everett met up with three other friends – sisters Millie and Donna Augustine and Emmett Peter – and the group headed to Florida, looking for work. “The Augustine’s were kind of mad. They thought Everett knew some folks there , to help them fi nd work. He didn’t,” said Cady. Police say Everett returned to Tobique Point in Perth-Andover New Brunswick with a friend, John Aceto in 1973, looking for Cathy . After being met with hostility by locals in the village, they left without getting much information. The first link in the c hain is broken. Police would sure like to talk with Everett again, but that isn’t possible. He died in F ernando Beach, Florida back in 1988. Police never did fi nd the stolen car, but a witness in Florida says it sat up on blocks nearby for decades, until it was eventually scrapped. Fast forward to 1988: A hunter, walking in the woods of Smyrna, claimed to have found a body with female clothing surrounding it. He hotfooted it out of
‘Many Chinese find even a simple grave marker beyond their means’ CHINA from page 2
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the woods, but was unable to lead searchers back to the unique area. According to stories in the Bangor Daily News published at the time , he c laimed the body was found near a pyramid shaped collection of sap barrels, with a stove nearby. Police searched, but were unable to fi nd the formation or the remains. Fast forward again to 2004: A joint task force of family members, friends, Maine w ardens, cadaver dogs, and Cady all returned to the woods. They came up empty handed. Hampered by snow and the beginning of hunting season, they vowed to continue the search. Police tried to interview Reid Perley. “I cannot say he was a suspect. We just w anted to talk to him. That was problematic” They eventually spoke with Reid P erley, who reportedly recognized Everett from a picture shown to him. When shown a picture of Moulton, he said he’s never seen her, Cady recalls. Now the Facebook Cause page is another tool. “There has got to be someone out there that knows something” Cady told me in the interview. “I’m doing this for her family . Her parents are elderly , living in an assisted living facility off Canco Road. They would just like to be able to know what happened.” Her sister Kim Higgins (no relation to me) was 12 at the time of the disappearance. “It was just so hard on our whole family . It imprinted us eac h with an individual deeply emotional dose of reality. I was convinced for years that I would never have children ... because after feeling how losing a c hild destroyed our casual comfort of family life when my sister disappeared - I thought I would never be willing to allow myself to be vulnerable to the worldly risks of potentially losing a child of my own. At age 25 I birthed our daughter, finally coming to terms with not living my life in fear of the worst – but I swear when our daughter turned 16 it was the most diffi cult emotional year of her youth - for all of us . Any time our daughter w as just 10 minutes late getting home - my emotions reeled, my heart raced - sank - feared - mourned all over again for my sister, for what my parents must ha ve felt when my sister never came home that night.” After looking at all the details of the case, it’s easy to see why this case lingers on the mind of a former detective. After his retirement, he knows that fish is out there, just waiting, trolling the depths, perhaps feeding a voracious hunger. He wants to bring one of Portland’s lost children home. If you have ANY information, call the P ortland Police Department detectives at 874-8596 or 8748533.
“Of course, if we cannot change the fact of the disparity between the ric h and poor, the least we can do is lessen the impact of it on society and lessen the advertising of it,” he said. “A lot of people cannot handle the extravagant ways of this first generation of the wealthy. It really grates on the public.” Ostentatious tombs are particularly irksome , he said, because many Chinese fi nd even a simple grave marker beyond their means. In a coinage that captures the widespread frustration, someone struggling to afford burial costs is called a “grave slave.” “There are many examples of how the ric h can afford to bury the dead, but not the common people,” said Zheng Fengtian, a professor of rural development at Beijing’ s Renmin University. “This makes many people very angry.”
One spectacular example took place last month in Wenling, a coastal city of about fi ve million people south of Shanghai. Five brothers commandeered the grounds of a high school to bid their mother goodbye with pomp befitting a state funeral. Thousands of onlookers watched a ceremony that featured nine flower-decked limousines, a uniformed band and a 16-gun salute . One brother told reporters that his mother wanted to be buried with “face.” Just last August, though, Wenling passed a regulation against funeral “extravagance and waste.” It limited the number of cars and wreaths and prohibited processions past schools and hospitals. The high school principal, the assistant principal and the government’s head of funeral practices were all fi red, according to media reports, and the family was fined about $450.