ME ME - Cathy Moulton, 16, Portland, 24 Sept 1971

[VaYank5150]

Unfortunately, no replies from the three antique agencies in Portland I reached out to.

 

[crimeblogger1983]

 

[crimeblogger1983]

View attachment 263269

 

[chaddylex]

I just listened to True Crime All the Time Podcast about Cathy. It's not updated on their website yet though.

 

[Choochoobella]

Hi Alleykins, My understanding is that she was known to have been picked up by Lester Everett in Portland, and that somewhere along the way they were joined by Reid Perley. The police already know this much. I can't really help with the case as what I know is second hand and much of it I'm sure the police know, like Perley's arrest record for example.

There are also some huge jurisdictional issues, like the fact that she is missing from the US but possibly taken across the border. And the fact that it's First Nations land means that even Canadian police (RCMP) don't have jurisdiction there. They may also suspect that her body is on Tobique but have no way of getting a warrant to search for her.

Sooverit, I'm posting this four and a half years after your initial insightful comments about Reid Perley. Below, I've posted the information about Cathy Moulton that is at the link, The Resource Center for Cold Case Missing Children's Cases. I made a few grammatical corrections to allow for easier reading.

Also, the subject of the True Crime All the Time Unsolved podcast of February 7, 2021 was Cathy Moulton. The podcast incorporates the information from The Resource Center for Cold Case Missing Children's Cases.


Cathy Marie Moulton

Cathy Marie Moulton
march 27, 2020by findthemissing

Left and Center: Cathy circa, 1971

Right: Age Progressed to age 63

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: September 24, 1971

Missing From: Portland, Cumberland County, Maine

Classification: Endangered Missing

Date Of Birth: June 28, 1955

Age: 16 years old

Height and Weight: 5’4″ and 98 pounds

Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian Female, Brown hair, Blue eyes, Cathy's four eyeteeth were removed prior to her disappearance, she was wearing orthodontic braces on her teeth in 1971, she has scars on both her feet from wort removal and flat moles scattered across her back, she has a distinctive white mark on her left elbow and she was known to wear thick eyeglasses with heavy dark colored frames

Clothing/Jewelry Description: A navy blue colored all weather coat, a navy blue pant dress, and brown leather shoes

NCMEC Number: 708865


Details of Disappearance

Cathy was last seen in Portland, Maine on September 24th 1971. She was last seen walking down Forest Avenue to walk home. Cathy had plans to attend a YMCA Dance in the evening hours of that day. She had made herself a dress and outfit for the occasion and asked her father, Lyman Moulton, to drop her off on Cumberland Avenue. She wanted to purchase some pantyhose and two tubes of toothpaste before going to the dance.

Cathy was known to have stopped at a music store and met a girlfriend there. Cathy and she talked for a bit. She told the friend that she was going home to shower and would see her at the dance later on. Cathy never showed up to the dance and failed to return home for dinner. Her parents immediately reported her as a missing person.

Witnesses saw Cathy getting into a blue vehicle with an older boy and possibly another male. The older boy was named Lester Everett and the car he was driving was a stolen blue 1963 Cadillac. After her disappearance, a woman came forward and stated she saw Cathy with two males that night.

The sighting occurred at a gas station in Presque Isle, Maine. The woman stated that she watched as one of the boys escorted Cathy to the bathroom and wrist guarded her there until she got out and walked her back to the car. Investigators checked out the story and were able to confirm that she did get into that car.

The car was driven by Everett and the accompanying male was named Ronald Reid Perley. Investigators believe the three traveled to the Mars Hills area of Aroostook County, Maine afterwards. There were reported sightings from people who saw and interacted with Cathy at the time.

Aroostook County is over 300 miles away from Cathy's home in Portland. The sightings took place in the days following Cathy's disappearance. She and Lester were working on a potato field at McBride’s Farm. Cathy was completely distrusting of Lester and continually begged to go back home to Portland.

Cathy befriended a teenage girl who worked in the fields. The girl said Cathy was nervous about her parents being upset with her and that they were probably looking for her on her behalf. She was always inside the Cadillac because it reminded her of the car her father drove the previous summer while they were on a trip.

Cathy stayed in the car all the time and was seen combing her hair a lot as well. She also slept in the car. The girl, Millie, said she suspected that Cathy was a runaway from home. She was noticeably fearful and sketchy of the other Indian workers on the field. They were all concerned for her well being. One of the men, Joe, brought Cathy a warm plate of food every evening which she gratefully accepted from him.

Lester became tired of Cathy's constant complaining to go home so in the evening of September 29th 1971, while the workers were enjoying a bonfire and gossip, Lester got behind the wheel of the stolen car. Cathy was in the passenger side seat of the car and he told her that they were going for a ride. She begged him to drive her back home but he didn’t.

Instead of driving towards Portland, Lester drove towards the Canadian border. There was a secret road that Reid Perley had shown him, the road avoided the Canada Customs inspection point of the border. He took a back road over the border into Canada just after 10:00 pm and successfully avoided Customs and Border protection.

Shortly afterwards, Lester pulled onto the Maliseet First Nation Reservation at Tobique Point, Canada. This is where Reid Perley and his family lived. Lester stopped in front of their home and was able to convince Reid to take Cathy off his hands. Lester left an hour later. He initially stated that he was glad to get Cathy off his hands but he later stated he regretted leaving her there.

Lester returned to the potato fields later in the evening without Cathy. Millie asked Lester where Cathy was and he said “I dropped her off at another camp. I’m glad to be rid of that nagging ”. He never mentioned Cathy again and became irritated if anyone asked him about her.

Investigators have considered the possibility that Cathy was slain by Lester and that he left her body in the woods of Aroostook County but this theory is unlikely since he left her at the other camp. Some of Perley’s relatives would later tell investigators that Cathy had been in their home and that a relative had harmed her. It’s unknown if this is what happened. His family has refused to cooperate with police about Cathy and won’t mention her ever.

Investigators believe that Cathy met her fate at the Reservation and was killed at the location at some point on or before November 23rd or 24th 1971. Investigators think Reid Perley might have ultimately been responsible for whatever happened to Cathy. In 1996, Reid was convicted of raping his neighbor. He snuck into her room through the window to rape her. He was sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison for the crime.

Lester Everett was disturbed to discover that Cathy had never returned home to Portland, Maine after he left her at the reservation. He and a friend, John Wayne Aceto, traveled back to the Reservation to uncover what exactly happened to Cathy two years earlier. Upon arriving, they were both attacked by Reid’s family members and were kicked/punched. As they were leaving, the Perley brothers threatened to kill them if they ever came back.

Lester moved to Florida and married. He had a son who was born in 1974. He later died in 1988. His wife stated that he never mentioned Cathy Moulton before he died and she didn’t know about his connection to the case. His son, David, was later arrested on a murder charge in Florida. He said that his father never spoke of Cathy either.

On May 15th 2015, investigators received new information regarding a sighting about Cathy. A woman called police and said she recalled seeing Reid Perley dragging a sobbing young woman up the street in the weeds near her home. This sighting occurred in the fall of 1971. Perley was seen dragging the girl into the woods. She never came out of the woods.

The identity of the girl was unknown but investigators believe it was Cathy being dragged up the road. A family who lived near the woods that the girl was dragged into experienced what they call paranormal intrusions. The children who lived in the home said that they saw the ghost of a young white girl coming to them at night. The incidents terrified the children.

These incidents bothered this family for many years. Apparently soon after those incidents occurred, their dog dragged home a human skull which appeared to come from someone. The skull appeared to not be that of a child but also not quite an adult. The neighbor initially believed that the skull likely belonged to someone who was buried in an old tribal burial ground.

The skull was never identified and was later tossed into a communal dump which has since been capped and now the Tobique Band Office and RCMP police station have since overtaken the property. It’s believed that the skull might have been Cathy’s but it’s now likely impossible to find.

Reid Perley was at one point held in prison for the murder of Judy Campbell. Judy was brutally murdered after leaving a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 27th 1978. She was stabbed multiple times and died at the emergency room afterwards. He was questioned and detained but was not charged with Judy’s murder.

At one point, Reid was formally interviewed about Cathy’s disappearance. He refused to cooperate with police and when asked if he killed Cathy, he didn’t respond but investigators noted that he looked as though he knew exactly what they were asking and that he knew what happened to her. He has never been charged with her disappearance. At one point he told someone named Brent that he killed a girl from Maine and buried her on a property. It’s unknown of the property was searched or not.

In 1983, a man who was hunting deep in the woods of Smyrna, Maine allegedly came across human skeletal remains. The remains were surrounded by female clothing and were near a triangular formation of maple syrup barrels next to an old stove. The man stated he was positive that these remains were female because he noticed a bra on the rib cage.

He reported his discovery to police at the time but he was unable to retrace his steps and officials could not find the remains. They searched the area for a day but couldn’t continue due to a heavy snowstorm. It’s believed the remains were discovered in early November since that’s when hunting season started.

The hunter was found in 2004 and interviewed regarding his discovery. He told investigators that the skull to the remains was missing. This could be due to black bear activity in the woods. In 2004, efforts were made to relocate the remains and see if they could be those of Cathy but they have never been found.

At the time of Cathy's disappearance, she was described as a kind and good hearted teenager who helped her elderly neighbors and made her own clothing. She also enjoyed writing poetry and was a Junior year student at Deering High School. While Cathy did experiment with both alcohol and cigarettes prior to her disappearance, investigators do not suspect she left on her own and she had no house problems when she disappeared.

Cathy's family continues to hope that they’ll uncover what exactly happened to Cathy. Her parents lived in the same home they shared with Cathy before she disappeared until they sold it in 2012. Cathy’s father passed away in 2017 but her mother and sisters are still alive.

Cathys disappearance remains unsolved and is considered the longest missing child investigation in Maine history.

Investigating Agency

If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:

Portland Police Department 207-874-8479

 

[Beekarina]

I used to go camping/hiking in Aroostook back in the 90s and it was crazy rural then. Can only imagine the difference between Portland and wherever poor Cathy ended up in 1971.

 

[Alleykins]

I used to go camping/hiking in Aroostook back in the 90s and it was crazy rural then. Can only imagine the difference between Portland and wherever poor Cathy ended up in 1971.

I don't think it's changed much since then, Beekarina.

 

[Beekarina]

I don't think it's changed much since then, Beekarina.

As someone who has driven cross country several times, and made a point of wandering off the beaten path, it definitely gets "weird" in places up there.

*Not meant as a diss. Rather you can really wander around in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Diane Redfern]

Not sure if someone has already included this: Who killed Julie Campbell? — The Crime Bus
There's more info about Reid Perley here. He's the main suspect of Julie's murder.

 

[TheArtfulDetective]

‘She didn’t just disappear’: Fifty years later, missing Portland teen’s family aches for answers
Cathy Moulton was 16 when she left home to run errands on Sept. 24, 1971, and never returned. Hers is one of the oldest active missing person cases in Maine and the United States.

‘She didn’t just disappear’: Fifty years later, missing Portland teen’s family aches for answers

 

[JnRyan]

Her Charley Project case was recently updated. Cathy Marie Moulton – The Charley Project

Interesting in that a hunter found a skeleton in 1983 with a woman's clothing, but couldn't retrace his route back to it.

"In 1983, a hunter said he came across a skeleton in the woods near Smyrna, Maine, surrounded by female clothing. Some investigators believe the remains were Cathy's. The hunter was unable to retrace his footsteps and lead police back to the site, however, and the bones were never seen again."

 

[Richard]

50 Years Missing...

Cathy Moulton, 16
Missing since 24 September 1971

 

[Alleykins]

Her Charley Project case was recently updated. Cathy Marie Moulton – The Charley Project

Interesting in that a hunter found a skeleton in 1983 with a woman's clothing, but couldn't retrace his route back to it.

"In 1983, a hunter said he came across a skeleton in the woods near Smyrna, Maine, surrounded by female clothing. Some investigators believe the remains were Cathy's. The hunter was unable to retrace his footsteps and lead police back to the site, however, and the bones were never seen again."

I found the hunter tidbit odd as well. Granted, the Maine woods are dense and vast, but most hunters have a favorite spot they frequent and are familiar with it. And if James Hicks can lead searchers to where he dumped his victims way up north in the woods after several years, and they are found, I'm not sure why this hunter couldn't retraces his recent steps at the time.

 

[JnRyan]

I found the hunter tidbit odd as well. Granted, the Maine woods are dense and vast, but most hunters have a favorite spot they frequent and are familiar with it. And if James Hicks can lead searchers to where he dumped his victims way up north in the woods after several years, and they are found, I'm not sure why this hunter couldn't retraces his recent steps at the time.

I grew up and hunted in LA and some of the woods and marshlands I hunted were dense. Easy to get lost in some places especially marsh. I had favorite spots or places I had scouted out so I probably could have led LE back to any such site. The one exception would be a hunter that had gotten lost and couldn't retrace his steps. But I even find that odd as when killers place or bury a body they don't trek far from paths or roads.

 

[CastlesBurning]

A brief mention...

https://www.wabi.tv/2022/05/06/database-137-open-missing-persons-cases-maine/

 

[Alleykins]

I was just re-reading the scenario above about Cathy being taken up to the county and all that transpired. It doesn't add up. Maybe some elements are true, like her getting into the stolen car in Portland, but...

Presque Isle and the surrounding areas are remote and rural, probably some of the closest areas you can get to being called the end of the world, but the area is not an island unto itself, cut off from the rest of civilization. It wasn't back then, either. There were phones. Payphones. Buses heading south. Nice people who would go out of their way to help.

If she stayed in the car, including sleeping in the car, it sounds like she wasn't constantly under anyone's thumb, tied up, confined, etc, and could have asked for help, or to use a phone. Or just telling her captor she had to use a bush and just started walking. Trust me, someone would have picked her up and taken her home or to some place where she could get help. If you're stranded in Maine, someone will almost always stop and offer assistance. I know this from personal experience, even from the 70s, when I was a child.

Anyway, if she were working, there were managers, supervisors, or coworkers she could have reached out to for help. If the other workers were looking out for her well-being, as stated, and they obviously knew she wanted to go home because she was accused of constantly nagging about going home, anyone of those people could have helped in some way. Given her a ride to the bus station under the guise of going to the store. Taken her to the store for a soda, and she could have used the payphone and called home collect. Heck, someone could have anonymously called the local police, state police, border patrol, sheriff, forest rangers, even the Mounties across the border, someone of authority, and reported a young girl being held against her will, and someone would have come to her rescue.

There's just something about this story that sounds too farfetched.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Cathy Moulton was last seen in downtown Portland in September 1971. In the decades since her disappearance, police have followed leads across New England and even into Canada searching for the then-16-year-old.

“I have families that call almost every year on the anniversary of their loved one’s disappearance or their birthdays,” said interim Dep. Chief Robert Martin.

Martin said several years after Moulton’s disappearance, a new team of detectives began intensely investigating the case and made some progress, but now, definitive answers on what happened to the teen were ever found.

“It just seems like something happened, that there was some third party involved in her disappearance, and that’s the troubling thing,” Martin said. “Was it someone she knew? Was it someone that just came upon her walking down the street.”

Martin said today, most missing persons investigations handled by Portland are resolved relatively quickly, pointing to the use of new technology like video surveillance, cellphones and electronic financial records to pinpoint those who go missing.

Kylie Low is a podcaster based in Maine. Her show Dark Downeast features the stories of crimes and disappearances across New England.

Her episodes dive deep into records, interviews with investigators and conversations with family members of victims and missing people. The Moulton case was one of the first disappearances her show covered.

“A missing person for a family, they have described it to me a nebulas, there is never really an end until that loved one comes home,” Low said. “Even if they’re looking for a conviction or some kind of answer in the justice system, what they really want is just to have their loved one home.”

Database: 137 open missing persons cases in Maine

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database, there are currently more than 21,000 open missing persons investigations nationwide.

www.wabi.tv

 

[JJ_Mes]

Why is nobody herein talking about "Ivan The Rapist"?​

Based on accounts from the actual LEO's who investigated this, it's pretty clear that she met her death at/near the Perley property in Tobique. Whether it was Ivan, Ronald Reid, or someone else in the family.
(Also just want to emphasize how pathetic and moot the retrospective regret of Lester was. He was just as culpable as whomever of those that actually ended her life were. Too little, too late, after a bushel of morally abject decisions affecting the life of another, never mind a female & a minor. Piece of human trash.)

The Perley home/family was filled with dark energy & chaos. Some real F'd up David Lynch Twin Peaks Laura Palmer type $h. Rape, murder, assault, etc. all well documented there.
(I don't usually subscribe to notions of ghosts, but the account from the adjacent family/kids was at least peculiar if nothing else. As LEO's know, rumors almost always originate in some basis of truth. There were likely whisperings amongst rez folks about what had happened to Cathy at/near the Perley property. Did an apparition start "haunting" the area? Unlikely. But that doesn't mean that a family of kids who all heard repeated accounts about her demise some years before, didn't let their frightful imaginative minds mixed with native lore, trick their eyes into believing whatever.)

Ideally a joint effort between RCMP, MSP, FBI & rez police would somehow find a way to get a confession or at least admissible witness testimony from a Perley family member. However, as evident by written and spoken account from Ivan's wife, the family was taught to hate (or at least distrust) The White Man.

Without that, mixed with waning interest, Defunding The Police, and with First Nations jurisdictional challenges, it's very unlikely anything of that sort will ever transpire. There simply wasn't enough interest on the other side of the border. That which is ultimately the key to finding a lead on where the body may be. Be it a sonar scan of the "new" basement slab, a search of the woods that she was allegedly dragged through by the hair screaming, or the yard through which she was allegedly chased naked in the snow at night.

Whichever way your pleasure tells, it's not looking good for ever gaining justice nor closure on this case. Hope is fine as a basic human emotion, but logic & reason are the outweighing factors here.

 

[HmmMysterious]

Exclusions for Cathy Moulton:
UP15863
UP8419
UP14969
Marlyse Honeychurch
Marcia King
UP5556
UP8579
UP6482
UP12683
UP8909
Haydee Rodriguez
UP6303
Christy Floyd
UP6796
UP6629
UP8493
Louise Peterson
Brenda Black
UP8821
Mary Silvani
Niki Bakoles
UP2512
UP6249

 

[spartanx]

I have the impression that, as they say in many posts, the police went with someone they trusted and was betrayed, perhaps on that farm where they were, this is the truth, perhaps his body was given to the animals or buried somewhere nearby. It's a pity that he hunter could not find the skeleton in the forest again..
rest in peace