The 25-year-old mother of two was last seen on or about Aug. 25, 1980, when she worked an evening shift at the Paramount Lounge, a gritty hotel bar in downtown Bangor known for its adult entertainment where she worked as a waitress and, occasionally, as a stripper.
Mandi Clark has her own opinions about what happened to her mother, but she does not believe she is alive after all these years.
“In 1995, my friend Wendy and I decided I would try to find my mom,” Clark said, sitting in the living room of her Bangor apartment with a collage of family pictures behind her, one featuring her as a toddler being held by her mother.
Because her mother’s family had moved to Florida and they didn’t really stay in touch, the two friends had little information to start with. They found Sharon Smith’s birth date and Social Security number, which had not been used since 1980, and started talking to anyone with connections to her or the Paramount Lounge.
Stories about what happened the night her mother went missing run the gamut of a jealous boyfriend killing her to gun running, Clark said she discovered.
During her investigation, which is referred to in a recently filed police affidavit, she got a call from an anonymous man who told her Franklin “George” Gilks killed her mother and that “things got carried away, accidents happen.”
Clark said the conversation scared her after the man told her to “leave things alone,” or something similar might happen to her. She reported the call to police.
While she stopped digging around at that point, she never stopped believing her mother would be found.
