ME ME - Virginia Pictou-Noyes, 26, Bangor, 24 April 1993

It's been more than two decades since a mother of seven vanished in Northern Maine, while trying to get home to her kids.

Somewhere between a truck stop in Houlton and the Town of Easton, it's believed the life of Virginia Pictou-Noyes came to an end.

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Police said Virginia was last seen walking north through the parking lot . Her brothers believe she was heading home on foot. They say she made it to a phone booth in Mars Hill.

They suspect foul play, but really don't know what happened.

"Our hearts tell us one thing, but then logic, you have to be logical about, 'Well, there's always that five percent chance it could've been something else, anything else," said Pictou. "It's just sad because there's five children, five children that grew up that didn't know their mom."

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Detectives believe she was able to reach Houlton before she made phone calls trying to get a ride home.

No one has seen her since that day 25 years ago.

Pictou-Noyes’ family has spent those years trying to put the pieces of her final day together.

“The first night after she went missing, my brother David and I literally drove up and down I-95 to measure the time it might take to walk or ride from Bangor to Houlton,” Pictou-Noyes’ sister Agnes Gould said at a press conference she and other members of her family held on April 20 to mark the 25th anniversary of her disappearance.
“Then we drove that same route again, stopping at every rest area, every turnoff and truck stop along the way. We did the same thing from Houlton to Mars Hill to Presque Isle to Easton,” Gould said.

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The night before Gould’s sister went missing, Larry Noyes was charged with domestic assault and taken to Penobscot County Jail while Roger Noyes Jr. was issued a summons on an assault charge for his role in the alleged beating of Pictou-Noyes outside the Bangor bar. Larry Noyes was able to make bail and the charges against both men were dropped after Pictou-Noyes disappeared.

Gould recalled that her sister often confided in her about the abuse she allegedly endured at the hands of her husband, Larry Noyes, and tried to leave him on multiple occasions.
“She would call me and I would come pick up her and the children,” said Gould, who at the time was an outreach caseworker and spiritual leader for the Aroostook Band of Micmacs in Presque Isle. “They would live with me for a few weeks, then her abuser would come and say, ‘I’m sorry, babe. I won’t do that again. Come home.’ Then I would get a call from her a few weeks later, saying that the beatings had gotten worse.”

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Since their appearance last year on the Cable Public Affairs Channel, Pictou family members say that a witness who they won’t publicly identify to protect that individual has come forward to say Pictou-Noyes received a ride from Houlton to Easton from a truck driver.

The family members believe they know what happened but they need that truck driver to come forward to verify the information.
With support from the Hope and Justice Project in Aroostook, they have done many media interviews in hopes that the trucker will reach out to them and the Maine State Police and help them fill in the gaps in Pictou-Noyes’ story.

“You don’t know how important you are to the indigenous community, to the domestic violence community. We encourage you to please come forward so that we could put this case to a close and begin healing,” Francis Pictou said, referring to the truck driver. “That part of the timeline, from Houlton to Easton, is the only thing we’re missing.”

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