scriptgirl
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2009
- Messages
- 1,565
- Reaction score
- 494
Here is a youtube video about the case:
[video=youtube;j9v2u-CYTC0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9v2u-CYTC0[/video]
And an article:
http://unitedforayla.com/red-rover-red-rover-i-call-mary-over/
Red Rover, Red Rover, I call Mary over.
March 7, 2015Jeff Hansoncold case file
The following is Alex Fergusons account regarding the unsolved murder of Mary Catherine Olenchuk.
Mr. Ferguson, was a maintenance worker at the Kings Port Inn in Kennebunkport Maine who learned about Marys case in 1992.
His interests were his own as he had no relation to the Olenchuks and over the years he documented the information he obtained about what has been dubbed the oldest cold case in Maine.:
Red Rover By Alex Ferguson Kennebunkport, ME
This is a chronicle of the abduction and murder of the 13-year-old daughter of a brigadier general. At the time, August 1970, it was one of the most sensational crimes the state of Maine had seen.
The frenzied investigation of local, state, and federal law enforcement (FBI and military) and the New England media (press, radio and television) never solved the case. It never went to court, was never closed. Except for the FBI files, the investigative information gathered by law enforcement was never released to the public.
Over time, the story sank into rumor, its legendary disturbance in the long run almost forgotten. Red Rover chronicles the public information about that disturbance.
Red Rover, Red Rover, I call Mary over. Anonymous
On August 7, 1970, Brigadier General Peter Olenchuk had been put in charge of Operation Chase. The army was transporting nerve gas from bases in Alabama and Kentucky to a liberty ship that was eventually scuttled 280 miles off Cape Kennedy. The governor of Florida, Claude Kirk, three congressmen from that state, and the mayor of Macon, Georgia, protested the transportation of nerve gas through their states and on the eighth of August a Richmond, Kentucky newspaper received a threat to the effect that a group of students would kidnap the families of personnel involved in the operation.
Ogunquit on August ninth was warm, 80s, sunny. Thirteen year old Mary Catherine Olenchuk, the youngest daughter of General Olenchuk had been on Little Beach with her mother and older sister. Little Beach was just down Israel Head Road from the Olenchuk summerhouse. About high tide at four oclock in the afternoon, Mary Catherine left Little Beach, walked up Israel Head Road to their house, changed into a T-shirt and shorts and hung her bathing suit on the clothesline. She borrowed her neighbors bicycle, rode to Towers Drug Store in Ogunquit center for some candy and then to the Norseman at Ogunquit Beach to pick up the Sunday New York Times being held there for the generals family.
Mary Catherine OlenchukShe returned across the Marginal Way footbridge to Wharf Lane by the Marginal Way House, to Shore Road and then onto Israel Head Road. As she reached the brow of Israel Head Road, a woman on the third floor of the Lookout Hotel saw a man driving a maroon car up the hill behind her. He leaned out of the car window and hailed Mary Catherine.
Mary stopped and spoke to the man. They smiled. Mary put her bicycle in an alcove of the hotel and got into the car. The man backed the car into the alcove and turned the car back down the hill to Shore Road.
Summer traffic going into Ogunquit center on Shore Road was typically backed up to Perkins Cove. Coming off Israel Head Road, its easier to go south on Shore Road than it is to negotiate the traffic into Ogunquit center. Go past Bourne Lane and Perkins Cove, take North Pine Hill Road and it comes onto Route 1 just above Eldredge Lumber on the other side of Route 1. The Logging Road at Eldredge Lumber goes to Clay Hill Road to North Village Road to 9 to 109 to 1, or something like that. Sometimes, in the summer, it s better to be lost on a woodsy back road than it is to know where some endless line of traffic may be headed.
By 6:30 that Sunday evening, Mary Cathetines mother called the general at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
At 7:15, following that conversation, Ruth Olenchuk notified the Ogunquit police that Mary was missing and requested that the state police be notified.
The general was relieved of duty and made arrangements to fly to Maine.
By eleven oclock, when a police search found the bicycle in an alcove of the Lookout Hotel, the moon, four days shy of its first quarter, had already set.
At quarter to three Monday morning, the Provost Marshall at Edgewood Arsenal called the FBI. He advised that although General Olenchuk was in charge of Operation Chase, there was no known connection between the missing daughter and her fathers assignment however the possibility, although remote, had occurred to him.
By four oclock that morning, the Boston office of the FBI called Ogunquit Police Chief Cecil Perkins. Perkins told the FBI that no evidence had been developed that would indicate an abduction, that at the time the matter was being handled as a missing person. Brigadier General Olenchuk was en route to Ogunquit, and there was at that time no press activity.
By the evening of the 11th, the Ogunquit Police Department issued a news release. On Wednesday, August 12th, the York County Coast Star, the Biddeford-Saco Journal, and the Portland Press Herald ran the story on the front page. The Star and Press Herald headlines feared the girl was kidnapped.
The Journal ran the story in the middle of the front page. Above it, the Postal Reform Bill was signed into law by President Nixon, Germany and the USSR signed a non- aggression treaty, Maines general fund revenue was up almost $10 million, and Hurricane Celia gusted through Corpus Christi, Texas a week before. To the right of Hurricane Celia:
Search Continued For Missing Girl.
Ogunquit- Another search party was organized today for Mary C. Olenchuk , 13, daughter of Brigadier General and Mrs. Peter Olenchuk, summer residents of this community, still missing after being last seen Sunday evening talking to a man in a maroon car near her parents home.
According to a spokesman, no plans have been made at this time to call the National Guard into the search.
Three search parties of 30-35 volunteers, aided by the police and fire departments of this town have searched two miles square in the Ogunquit area and have canvassed house-to- house with photos of the girl. Two military helicopters are being called to the scene to comb the area.
Mary was last seen by an elderly woman living on the third floor of the Lookout Hotel between 4 and 6 p.m. Sunday. She was talking to a man in a maroon sedan that had scratches and dents on the hood. The bicycle she had been riding was later found at the scene.
The missing girl was described as five feet three, weighing 80 pounds with dark red, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes and freckles .When last seen she was wearing a white T-shirt with the inscription Yo-Ko-Miko, Andrews AFB on it, pink shorts, and wearing no shoes.
Two state police detectives and four state police officers, headed by state Police Sergeant Paul Falconer, are investigating. Also on the scene are four FBI agents, headed by James Gibbons, and one Anny intelligence man. Local police are cooperating in the search efforts.
Chief Cecil Perkin s of the Ogunquit Police Department commented that searching for the girl was like looking for a needle in the haystack.
Police kept the disappearance secret until Tuesday thinking the family might receive word from a kidnapper if the girl had been abducted.
Chief Perkins said Tuesday there had been no calls, no notes, nothing. The girl just dropped out of sight.
The last time Mary Catherine was seen by people who could identify her was when she went by the Marginal Way House at 4:30 pm. Two employees waved to her as she passed. The state police public information officer said that nothing in her background indicated she would disappear on her own. He added that the match of Mary Catherines deep auburn hair and her pet Irish setters fur were striking. She trained the dog on the Mary Catherine Olenchuk2beach and was part of the summer scene in Ogunquit.
Her Irish setters name was Kelly. Mary Catherine was pretty, physically confident, yet carried an air of shyness. She played with Kelly to an endless crowd on an endless beach.
Ogunquit Beach in the summer was heaven. Summer bodies were muted by sunlight and a breeze off the ocean while the other half of Ogunquit roasted along Shore Road and Route 1 beyond the dunes and the Ogunquit River.
After a healthy winter the Ogunquit River tumbled out of North Berwick in the spring. In August of a dry summer, it slowed to a fast trickle under the Maine Pike, then spilled through the rocky falls under Route 1 just as it emptied into the mile and a half long tidal section of the river that runs behind the dunes of Ogunquit Beach. The river flowed under the Beach Street Bridge to the rocky promontory of lsrael Head where it finally veered into the Atlantic. At low tide, a body could wade across the river from the end of Ogunquit Beach to Israel Head and Little Beach just around the point. At high tide, the Atlantic swelled onto the beach and up the Ogunquit River.
That Sunday, the summer bodies ran in and out of the Maine ocean. A clutch of boys dove off the bridge at Beach Street into the Ogunquit River, then swimming to the river beach, ran nimbly to the road, back to the bridge and into the river again. At high tide, Mary Catherine was barely noticed as she watched this scene. As much as she might have wanted to take the plunge, she peddled on to the footbridge, past the Marginal Way House and into the traffic on Shore Road.
II.
At the end of the day on August 13th, a memo from the Boston office of the FBI reported that abandoned vehicles and unoccupied buildings had been rechecked by local authorities with no results; the Army provided a helicopter for searching wooded areas and the Maine State Police reviewed records of sex offenders who may have owned a maroon vehicle.
By Thursday, August 13th three New England States had been alerted to search for a faded maroon-colored, hard top sedan with dents on the hood.
General Olenchuk, his wife and two daughters, Jane, 17 and Mrs. Nancy Shaw, were in seclusion in their home as local and out-of-state television crews and reporters crowded into the tiny police station in Ogunquit Square. Three shoulder-to-shoulder search parties, made up of fire department and police volunteers from Wells, York Village, York Beach and Ogunquit, had combed the area since Sunday night, but on Wednesday afternoon, Ogunquit Police Chief Cecil Perkins and State Police Sergeants Paul Falconer and Jerry Boutilier called off the ground search. Well depend on the helicopter search from now on, as well as checking out all leads from citizens, Sgt. Boutilier said, explaining the switchboard at the station had been receiving a great number of calls regarding the disappearance. He said however that no leads other than the description of the car had checked out as of late yesterday afternoon .
Mary was described by neighbors as a good girl who helped her mother with daily chores. Shes definitely not a hippie and I know of no reason shed run away. Its a close knit family, a friend reported. A policeman described her as looking young for her age with unusually erect posture.
By Friday the 14th the pace of the search had slowed after three days of frantic activity.
On Saturday, the Biddeford Journal reported that police called off plans to comb wooded areas in East Biddeford because Biddeford police were busy with a fire that broke out in the business section of that city.
The hunt for the pretty teenager was being conducted by state and local police, assisted by Army Intelligence, FBI men and local game warden Charles Libby, who was called in the day before.
Police divulged that the witness described the man in the car as a white male, about 30 years of age, medium height and weight, and dark haired. Definitely no hippie .
Marys sister, Jane, 17, and her mother, Mrs. Ruth Olenchuk, visited the small police station. Because Jane looked enough like Mary to be her twin sister, with similar red hair, blue eyes and freckles, police were startled when the pair walked in. No photographs of the couple were allowed, but State Police Detective Charles Bruton, now heading the search, commented Mrs. Olenchuk was holding up well under the terrible strain of the past few days.
General Olenchuk appeared at his front door, but would make no comments to reporters other than to say he was cooperating with the Attorney Generals office and with police.
State Police Public Information Officer P.L Pert said the search is complicated by thousands of tourists in the area. Leads checked and rechecked included several maroon cars, a pair of shorts found on the local beach, and a man on the beach who was reportedly asking young girls to go to a nearby dress shop with him to try on some clothes.
Town Overseer Alden Jacobs, who has helped with almost every search conducted so far, said hed never seen such an intensive search. All members of the town police force continued to work double shifts, as they have since Sunday night.
According to State Police, more than 1,000 posters bearing the picture and description of the missing girl have been distributed along the Canadian border and as far south as Delaware.
On August 15th, an FBI agent handed the generals sister the unlisted phone number of Shirley Harrison, a well known local psychic. The agent told her that officially he couldnt consult a psychic sensitive, but off the record he gave her Harrisons number. Shirley Harrison gave the results of her work to the Olenchuks and they gave it to authorities.
That Sunday, fifty local volunteers combed the coastal area between Ogunquit and York Beach. Fifteen additional volunteers from the navy yard were in the Goose Rocks Beach -Biddeford Pool area, under the direction of State Police Sgt. Paul Falconer. Ogunquit Fire Chief Burton McAfee had the Ogunquit Fire Department pump the water out of an old stone quarry on Pine Hill Road. No clues were found by any of the groups.
An army helicopter had been conducting an aerial search of the area for several days with state and local police following up on the ground.
The state police public information officer said more than 50 abandoned cars were thoroughly checked out Sunday between Ogunquit and York Beach from the coast to about five miles inland.
On August 17th, an FBI teletype from Chicago to Boston advised that Mary Catherine arrived at the Army Procurement Supply Agency, near Joliet, Illinois, last February 1st and left for Maine in June. Mary Catherine attended St. Rose School in Wilmington, Illinois, had no definite boyfriends but had attended a class picnic and was well known to several classmates. There were no other teenagers residing near Mary Catherine at APSA. Mary Catherine attended weekly Girl Scout meetings and was friendly with a number of these individuals. Mary Catherine was shy, athletic, a devout Catholic, polite, well mannered and it was not believed Mary Catherine would enter a vehicle unless the identity of the driver was known or she was forced to enter and would have struggled if accosted.
Maine State Police advised the FBI that General Olenchuk conferred with military sources in order to determine if a television announcement by him with respect to his daughter s disappearance and his status as commanding officer in charge of the disposition of the nerve gas might produce publicity, which might be of assistance in locating the whereabouts of the victim.
On Thursday, August 20th General Olenchuk told a news conference held at the Wells Grange Hall that it was highly improbable there was any connection between his role in the recent overland shipment of nerve gas and the disappearance of his 13-year* old daughter.
The general confirmed reports that he had been in charge of the rail shipment of nerve gas from Alabama and Kentucky to Sunny Point, N.C. The nerve gas was sunk earlier that week aboard an old Liberty ship 283 miles off Cape Kennedy. Olenchuk said the possibility of any link between his daughters disappearance and his assignment had been pondered and then discounted because no word had been received by the family since the girl disappeared.
The general said Mary had gone downtown after church to buy a newspaper and on the way back, something happened to her
Olenchuk headed the Armys Procurement and Supply Agency in Joliet, Ill. He said he was chosen for the nerve gas assignment because of his Chemical Corps background but was not notified of his selection until two days before his daughter disappeared.
He flew to Alabama to supervise security and transportation of the poisonous gasses that were kept in rocket vaults. When he learned of his daughters disappearance he flew to Maine to be with his wife and another daughter. A third daughter, who is married and lives in Boston also came to Maine. He said he would take his family back to Joliet at the end of the summer if there were no further developments in the search.
Olenchuk appealed to the public to provide any information that could lead to the return of his daughter no matter how unimportant the information may seem
It has been 11 days since any member of our family has seen or heard from our youngest daughter, Mary. I know I dont need to tell you what my family has been going through. All of you who have children or brothers and sisters know. the general said .
He praised the work of the Ogunquit Police, the Maine State Police, the FBI and other law enforcement and assisting personnel working on the case.
The general said he didnt believe his daughter would have run away from home. He said she had been warned not to talk with strangers but that if she had stopped to talk with the man mentioned by the only witness to the incident she either had confidence in the individual or knew him.
That day, the Maine State Police moved their base of operation on the case from the Ogunquit police station to the state police barracks in Kittery.
A man made a telephone call from a pay phone in Biddeford informing the operator who answered the call that he had Mary Catherine and the operator should notify the police that he would call later with ransom plans. Although the man was believed to be inebriated, the state police instituted action to apprehend him if he called again.
[video=youtube;j9v2u-CYTC0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9v2u-CYTC0[/video]
And an article:
http://unitedforayla.com/red-rover-red-rover-i-call-mary-over/
Red Rover, Red Rover, I call Mary over.
March 7, 2015Jeff Hansoncold case file
The following is Alex Fergusons account regarding the unsolved murder of Mary Catherine Olenchuk.
Mr. Ferguson, was a maintenance worker at the Kings Port Inn in Kennebunkport Maine who learned about Marys case in 1992.
His interests were his own as he had no relation to the Olenchuks and over the years he documented the information he obtained about what has been dubbed the oldest cold case in Maine.:
Red Rover By Alex Ferguson Kennebunkport, ME
This is a chronicle of the abduction and murder of the 13-year-old daughter of a brigadier general. At the time, August 1970, it was one of the most sensational crimes the state of Maine had seen.
The frenzied investigation of local, state, and federal law enforcement (FBI and military) and the New England media (press, radio and television) never solved the case. It never went to court, was never closed. Except for the FBI files, the investigative information gathered by law enforcement was never released to the public.
Over time, the story sank into rumor, its legendary disturbance in the long run almost forgotten. Red Rover chronicles the public information about that disturbance.
Red Rover, Red Rover, I call Mary over. Anonymous
On August 7, 1970, Brigadier General Peter Olenchuk had been put in charge of Operation Chase. The army was transporting nerve gas from bases in Alabama and Kentucky to a liberty ship that was eventually scuttled 280 miles off Cape Kennedy. The governor of Florida, Claude Kirk, three congressmen from that state, and the mayor of Macon, Georgia, protested the transportation of nerve gas through their states and on the eighth of August a Richmond, Kentucky newspaper received a threat to the effect that a group of students would kidnap the families of personnel involved in the operation.
Ogunquit on August ninth was warm, 80s, sunny. Thirteen year old Mary Catherine Olenchuk, the youngest daughter of General Olenchuk had been on Little Beach with her mother and older sister. Little Beach was just down Israel Head Road from the Olenchuk summerhouse. About high tide at four oclock in the afternoon, Mary Catherine left Little Beach, walked up Israel Head Road to their house, changed into a T-shirt and shorts and hung her bathing suit on the clothesline. She borrowed her neighbors bicycle, rode to Towers Drug Store in Ogunquit center for some candy and then to the Norseman at Ogunquit Beach to pick up the Sunday New York Times being held there for the generals family.
Mary Catherine OlenchukShe returned across the Marginal Way footbridge to Wharf Lane by the Marginal Way House, to Shore Road and then onto Israel Head Road. As she reached the brow of Israel Head Road, a woman on the third floor of the Lookout Hotel saw a man driving a maroon car up the hill behind her. He leaned out of the car window and hailed Mary Catherine.
Mary stopped and spoke to the man. They smiled. Mary put her bicycle in an alcove of the hotel and got into the car. The man backed the car into the alcove and turned the car back down the hill to Shore Road.
Summer traffic going into Ogunquit center on Shore Road was typically backed up to Perkins Cove. Coming off Israel Head Road, its easier to go south on Shore Road than it is to negotiate the traffic into Ogunquit center. Go past Bourne Lane and Perkins Cove, take North Pine Hill Road and it comes onto Route 1 just above Eldredge Lumber on the other side of Route 1. The Logging Road at Eldredge Lumber goes to Clay Hill Road to North Village Road to 9 to 109 to 1, or something like that. Sometimes, in the summer, it s better to be lost on a woodsy back road than it is to know where some endless line of traffic may be headed.
By 6:30 that Sunday evening, Mary Cathetines mother called the general at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
At 7:15, following that conversation, Ruth Olenchuk notified the Ogunquit police that Mary was missing and requested that the state police be notified.
The general was relieved of duty and made arrangements to fly to Maine.
By eleven oclock, when a police search found the bicycle in an alcove of the Lookout Hotel, the moon, four days shy of its first quarter, had already set.
At quarter to three Monday morning, the Provost Marshall at Edgewood Arsenal called the FBI. He advised that although General Olenchuk was in charge of Operation Chase, there was no known connection between the missing daughter and her fathers assignment however the possibility, although remote, had occurred to him.
By four oclock that morning, the Boston office of the FBI called Ogunquit Police Chief Cecil Perkins. Perkins told the FBI that no evidence had been developed that would indicate an abduction, that at the time the matter was being handled as a missing person. Brigadier General Olenchuk was en route to Ogunquit, and there was at that time no press activity.
By the evening of the 11th, the Ogunquit Police Department issued a news release. On Wednesday, August 12th, the York County Coast Star, the Biddeford-Saco Journal, and the Portland Press Herald ran the story on the front page. The Star and Press Herald headlines feared the girl was kidnapped.
The Journal ran the story in the middle of the front page. Above it, the Postal Reform Bill was signed into law by President Nixon, Germany and the USSR signed a non- aggression treaty, Maines general fund revenue was up almost $10 million, and Hurricane Celia gusted through Corpus Christi, Texas a week before. To the right of Hurricane Celia:
Search Continued For Missing Girl.
Ogunquit- Another search party was organized today for Mary C. Olenchuk , 13, daughter of Brigadier General and Mrs. Peter Olenchuk, summer residents of this community, still missing after being last seen Sunday evening talking to a man in a maroon car near her parents home.
According to a spokesman, no plans have been made at this time to call the National Guard into the search.
Three search parties of 30-35 volunteers, aided by the police and fire departments of this town have searched two miles square in the Ogunquit area and have canvassed house-to- house with photos of the girl. Two military helicopters are being called to the scene to comb the area.
Mary was last seen by an elderly woman living on the third floor of the Lookout Hotel between 4 and 6 p.m. Sunday. She was talking to a man in a maroon sedan that had scratches and dents on the hood. The bicycle she had been riding was later found at the scene.
The missing girl was described as five feet three, weighing 80 pounds with dark red, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes and freckles .When last seen she was wearing a white T-shirt with the inscription Yo-Ko-Miko, Andrews AFB on it, pink shorts, and wearing no shoes.
Two state police detectives and four state police officers, headed by state Police Sergeant Paul Falconer, are investigating. Also on the scene are four FBI agents, headed by James Gibbons, and one Anny intelligence man. Local police are cooperating in the search efforts.
Chief Cecil Perkin s of the Ogunquit Police Department commented that searching for the girl was like looking for a needle in the haystack.
Police kept the disappearance secret until Tuesday thinking the family might receive word from a kidnapper if the girl had been abducted.
Chief Perkins said Tuesday there had been no calls, no notes, nothing. The girl just dropped out of sight.
The last time Mary Catherine was seen by people who could identify her was when she went by the Marginal Way House at 4:30 pm. Two employees waved to her as she passed. The state police public information officer said that nothing in her background indicated she would disappear on her own. He added that the match of Mary Catherines deep auburn hair and her pet Irish setters fur were striking. She trained the dog on the Mary Catherine Olenchuk2beach and was part of the summer scene in Ogunquit.
Her Irish setters name was Kelly. Mary Catherine was pretty, physically confident, yet carried an air of shyness. She played with Kelly to an endless crowd on an endless beach.
Ogunquit Beach in the summer was heaven. Summer bodies were muted by sunlight and a breeze off the ocean while the other half of Ogunquit roasted along Shore Road and Route 1 beyond the dunes and the Ogunquit River.
After a healthy winter the Ogunquit River tumbled out of North Berwick in the spring. In August of a dry summer, it slowed to a fast trickle under the Maine Pike, then spilled through the rocky falls under Route 1 just as it emptied into the mile and a half long tidal section of the river that runs behind the dunes of Ogunquit Beach. The river flowed under the Beach Street Bridge to the rocky promontory of lsrael Head where it finally veered into the Atlantic. At low tide, a body could wade across the river from the end of Ogunquit Beach to Israel Head and Little Beach just around the point. At high tide, the Atlantic swelled onto the beach and up the Ogunquit River.
That Sunday, the summer bodies ran in and out of the Maine ocean. A clutch of boys dove off the bridge at Beach Street into the Ogunquit River, then swimming to the river beach, ran nimbly to the road, back to the bridge and into the river again. At high tide, Mary Catherine was barely noticed as she watched this scene. As much as she might have wanted to take the plunge, she peddled on to the footbridge, past the Marginal Way House and into the traffic on Shore Road.
II.
At the end of the day on August 13th, a memo from the Boston office of the FBI reported that abandoned vehicles and unoccupied buildings had been rechecked by local authorities with no results; the Army provided a helicopter for searching wooded areas and the Maine State Police reviewed records of sex offenders who may have owned a maroon vehicle.
By Thursday, August 13th three New England States had been alerted to search for a faded maroon-colored, hard top sedan with dents on the hood.
General Olenchuk, his wife and two daughters, Jane, 17 and Mrs. Nancy Shaw, were in seclusion in their home as local and out-of-state television crews and reporters crowded into the tiny police station in Ogunquit Square. Three shoulder-to-shoulder search parties, made up of fire department and police volunteers from Wells, York Village, York Beach and Ogunquit, had combed the area since Sunday night, but on Wednesday afternoon, Ogunquit Police Chief Cecil Perkins and State Police Sergeants Paul Falconer and Jerry Boutilier called off the ground search. Well depend on the helicopter search from now on, as well as checking out all leads from citizens, Sgt. Boutilier said, explaining the switchboard at the station had been receiving a great number of calls regarding the disappearance. He said however that no leads other than the description of the car had checked out as of late yesterday afternoon .
Mary was described by neighbors as a good girl who helped her mother with daily chores. Shes definitely not a hippie and I know of no reason shed run away. Its a close knit family, a friend reported. A policeman described her as looking young for her age with unusually erect posture.
By Friday the 14th the pace of the search had slowed after three days of frantic activity.
On Saturday, the Biddeford Journal reported that police called off plans to comb wooded areas in East Biddeford because Biddeford police were busy with a fire that broke out in the business section of that city.
The hunt for the pretty teenager was being conducted by state and local police, assisted by Army Intelligence, FBI men and local game warden Charles Libby, who was called in the day before.
Police divulged that the witness described the man in the car as a white male, about 30 years of age, medium height and weight, and dark haired. Definitely no hippie .
Marys sister, Jane, 17, and her mother, Mrs. Ruth Olenchuk, visited the small police station. Because Jane looked enough like Mary to be her twin sister, with similar red hair, blue eyes and freckles, police were startled when the pair walked in. No photographs of the couple were allowed, but State Police Detective Charles Bruton, now heading the search, commented Mrs. Olenchuk was holding up well under the terrible strain of the past few days.
General Olenchuk appeared at his front door, but would make no comments to reporters other than to say he was cooperating with the Attorney Generals office and with police.
State Police Public Information Officer P.L Pert said the search is complicated by thousands of tourists in the area. Leads checked and rechecked included several maroon cars, a pair of shorts found on the local beach, and a man on the beach who was reportedly asking young girls to go to a nearby dress shop with him to try on some clothes.
Town Overseer Alden Jacobs, who has helped with almost every search conducted so far, said hed never seen such an intensive search. All members of the town police force continued to work double shifts, as they have since Sunday night.
According to State Police, more than 1,000 posters bearing the picture and description of the missing girl have been distributed along the Canadian border and as far south as Delaware.
On August 15th, an FBI agent handed the generals sister the unlisted phone number of Shirley Harrison, a well known local psychic. The agent told her that officially he couldnt consult a psychic sensitive, but off the record he gave her Harrisons number. Shirley Harrison gave the results of her work to the Olenchuks and they gave it to authorities.
That Sunday, fifty local volunteers combed the coastal area between Ogunquit and York Beach. Fifteen additional volunteers from the navy yard were in the Goose Rocks Beach -Biddeford Pool area, under the direction of State Police Sgt. Paul Falconer. Ogunquit Fire Chief Burton McAfee had the Ogunquit Fire Department pump the water out of an old stone quarry on Pine Hill Road. No clues were found by any of the groups.
An army helicopter had been conducting an aerial search of the area for several days with state and local police following up on the ground.
The state police public information officer said more than 50 abandoned cars were thoroughly checked out Sunday between Ogunquit and York Beach from the coast to about five miles inland.
On August 17th, an FBI teletype from Chicago to Boston advised that Mary Catherine arrived at the Army Procurement Supply Agency, near Joliet, Illinois, last February 1st and left for Maine in June. Mary Catherine attended St. Rose School in Wilmington, Illinois, had no definite boyfriends but had attended a class picnic and was well known to several classmates. There were no other teenagers residing near Mary Catherine at APSA. Mary Catherine attended weekly Girl Scout meetings and was friendly with a number of these individuals. Mary Catherine was shy, athletic, a devout Catholic, polite, well mannered and it was not believed Mary Catherine would enter a vehicle unless the identity of the driver was known or she was forced to enter and would have struggled if accosted.
Maine State Police advised the FBI that General Olenchuk conferred with military sources in order to determine if a television announcement by him with respect to his daughter s disappearance and his status as commanding officer in charge of the disposition of the nerve gas might produce publicity, which might be of assistance in locating the whereabouts of the victim.
On Thursday, August 20th General Olenchuk told a news conference held at the Wells Grange Hall that it was highly improbable there was any connection between his role in the recent overland shipment of nerve gas and the disappearance of his 13-year* old daughter.
The general confirmed reports that he had been in charge of the rail shipment of nerve gas from Alabama and Kentucky to Sunny Point, N.C. The nerve gas was sunk earlier that week aboard an old Liberty ship 283 miles off Cape Kennedy. Olenchuk said the possibility of any link between his daughters disappearance and his assignment had been pondered and then discounted because no word had been received by the family since the girl disappeared.
The general said Mary had gone downtown after church to buy a newspaper and on the way back, something happened to her
Olenchuk headed the Armys Procurement and Supply Agency in Joliet, Ill. He said he was chosen for the nerve gas assignment because of his Chemical Corps background but was not notified of his selection until two days before his daughter disappeared.
He flew to Alabama to supervise security and transportation of the poisonous gasses that were kept in rocket vaults. When he learned of his daughters disappearance he flew to Maine to be with his wife and another daughter. A third daughter, who is married and lives in Boston also came to Maine. He said he would take his family back to Joliet at the end of the summer if there were no further developments in the search.
Olenchuk appealed to the public to provide any information that could lead to the return of his daughter no matter how unimportant the information may seem
It has been 11 days since any member of our family has seen or heard from our youngest daughter, Mary. I know I dont need to tell you what my family has been going through. All of you who have children or brothers and sisters know. the general said .
He praised the work of the Ogunquit Police, the Maine State Police, the FBI and other law enforcement and assisting personnel working on the case.
The general said he didnt believe his daughter would have run away from home. He said she had been warned not to talk with strangers but that if she had stopped to talk with the man mentioned by the only witness to the incident she either had confidence in the individual or knew him.
That day, the Maine State Police moved their base of operation on the case from the Ogunquit police station to the state police barracks in Kittery.
A man made a telephone call from a pay phone in Biddeford informing the operator who answered the call that he had Mary Catherine and the operator should notify the police that he would call later with ransom plans. Although the man was believed to be inebriated, the state police instituted action to apprehend him if he called again.