The Murder of Shirley McAvoy (Maine)

In late summer of 1990, a mother-in-central mean seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, and she was leaning on friends and trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. Then shortly before a scheduled court date related to her pending divorce, she simply disappeared. Days turned into weeks, and small unsettling details began to surface, details that didn't fit with the idea of someone who'd chosen to leave. What started as a missing person's case slowly transformed into something far more disturbing, stretching well beyond the quiet town where Shirley was last seen. More than 35 years later, investigators are still trying to identify a mystery man, believed to know exactly what happened to Shirley. I'm Kylie Lo, and this is the case of Shirley McAvoy, on Dark Down East. 32-year-old Shirley McAvoy was trying to find a new path forward in life. Everything she knew for the last 13-plus years was falling apart. She and her husband, Brian McAvoy, were already separated, and next would be divorce papers. According to reporting by Brenda Seikens for the Bangor Daily News, Shirley was living alone with her two dogs in Pittsfield, Maine, while her two young daughters were in the custody of their father. It wasn't an easy adjustment, and friends said that she dealt with bouts of depression for everything she'd been going through. To fill the quiet and loneliness of that summer in 1990, Shirley did a little redecorating at her home on Berry Road, putting up curtains for some extra privacy in the dining room, and adding a matching bed spread to bring the look together. She also spent some time with friends and made new ones. In fact, on the night of August 8, 1990, Shirley reportedly had some of those new and old friends over for a gathering at her house. The following day, August 9, Shirley opened her door to find a police officer standing there, papers in hand. He was there to serve her with the divorce documents from Brian. They had a court date the very next day for a hearing related to their pending divorce, and possibly to discuss the custody arrangement for their children. Maybe the heaviness of the court date would have been balanced out for Shirley, because they'd also be celebrating one of her daughter's birthdays. But August 10th came, and the hearing began, but Shirley didn't show. She missed her daughter's birthday, too. For Shirley's friends, the absence was certainly odd, but they tried to rationalize it in their minds. Maybe Shirley just needed to get away and deal with her problems somehow. Maybe she left to get some space from it all. So the days passed, and then a week, and Shirley's home sat empty. There were no gatherings or visits with friends, no sign of the friendly neighbor on Barry Street. By the end of August, Shirley's estranged husband Brian started to worry. There are unconfirmed details that a letter tipped Brian off that something might be wrong, but we'll get to that later. What you need to know now is that it was Brian who went to the Pittsfield Police Department in mid-August of 1990, about a week or two after she was last seen, to report Shirley missing. According to reporting by Steve Eaton for the Morning Sentinel, police learned that Shirley's car was also missing. It was a red 1992 door old-smobile cutlass supreme, license plate number 26269P. The vehicle was registered in both Shirley and Brian's names. Shirley's two dogs, a five-month-old husky shepherd named Max and a two-year-old long-haired dog named Nikki, were nowhere to be found either. From the publicly available source material, it's hard to tell what if any investigative measures were taken immediately after that missing persons report was filed. If local police made little effort to track Shirley down, that wouldn't be too surprising knowing how the cases of missing adults were typically handled in that era, and sometimes even now. Shirley was an adult. Her car was missing. Her dogs seemingly vanished too. Those facts alone suggested a relatively benign scenario where she just packed up in left one day. But what was discovered inside Shirley's home almost two months later painted a very different and chilling reality. In early October, with still no sign of her, Brian wanted to get Shirley's home winterized. If that term is unfamiliar to you, here in Maine and many other New England and Northern States, if you're expecting a house will be vacant through the winter months and you won't be running the heat, winterization is imperative to prevent the pipes from freezing and bursting. Brian said that he wanted the house ready for Shirley if and when she came back to it. As part of that, the local police chief accompanied three people over to the house on October 1st, so they could start by cleaning out the refrigerator that was probably filled with rotten food by that point. One source reports that this cleanup crew included someone described as Brian's girlfriend, while in other states it was a friend of Shirley's, Brian himself and someone else. Either way, the police chief allowed the group inside to begin their work. Not long after, a call came into the police station asking for assistance on Barry Road. The group that Shirley's home had found a substance that they wanted someone to take a look. Shirley's friend who wished to remain anonymous said that she was the first one to notice it, a strange discoloration on the floor that almost looked like burn marks. The couch was also moved out of its usual spot and positioned on top of the marks on the floor. When they pushed the couch back, what it revealed made Shirley's friend feel sick. She thought it looked exactly like dried blood, a lot of it. The chief returned to Shirley's home and what he found there led him to call Main State Police. Yellow crime scene tape went up around Shirley's home on October 3rd, while the Criminal Investigation Division prepared to process the scene. Canine units sniff the ground outside as crime scene technicians and detectives photographed the stain and collected items around the house. Main State Police wouldn't get into specifics at first, saying only that things inside the house made them suspicious, and they stopped short of saying there was confirmed foul play connected to Shirley's disappearance. But when the analysis of the items removed from Shirley's house finally came in, the police dropped their vague hints. A state police sergeant stated that they'd found a significant amount of human blood inside Shirley's home, including a two foot by two or three foot stain on the living room carpet. Although it hadn't yet been typed, they were operating on the assumption that the blood belonged to Shirley. At least one source states that blood was also discovered in the bathroom, another says there was blood spatter on the walls. Local and state police partnered on the early investigation questioning friends and neighbors and family members to determine when exactly Shirley was last seen. The woman who noticed the out-of-place sofa said she was the last person to see Shirley. The friend told Steve Eaton of the morning Sentinel that none of Shirley's clothes were missing from the house, but something else was, Shirley's new bed spread. Those home redecorating projects were all messed up. The curtains she hung up for privacy in the dining room were inexplicably moved to the living room. While Shirley's dogs had been unaccounted for since Brian first reported her missing, a search of her house revealed signs that at some point, her dogs were likely locked in one of the rooms. The door was covered in scratch marks as if they were trying to get out and they'd gone to the bathroom on the floor. That was a red flag for those who knew Shirley well because she treated those dogs like they were her children. Prior to the discovery of the human blood in Shirley's home, details of her disappearance and the description of her car had not been entered into the National Crime Information Center database. But now, with the potential of a crime playing a part in her unexplained absence, that information finally made it into NCIC. A search of Shirley's license plate and other info kicked back two out-of-state incidents involving her red cutlass supreme. The first incident was a reported hit-and-run accident in Boston, but rather than leading to Shirley, it only made the trail to find her more elusive. The other driver in the collision reported that a man had been driving the car when it rear-ended him just outside the tunnel on the southeast expressway. The male driver handed over the insurance card that was in the vehicle, which had Brian McAvoy's name on it. The other driver didn't see a woman inside the cutlass. However, he remembered the male driver saying something like, "I'm never going to drive in Boston again before he fled the scene of the accident." Who was this guy behind the wheel of Shirley's car? As Detective started talking with the people closest to her, a shadowy, inconsistent picture began to fade away. form of a mysterious stranger who seemed to just appear at her home one day. They knew him as Jerry, a name that may have been as slippery as the details of his life. A friend of Shirley said that she met a man who had stayed with Shirley for a few days before she disappeared. He was introduced as a relative and had been there for about 5 days as far as the friend knew. However, the nature of Shirley's relationship with this man is described differently depending on the source. Main state police said that the guy known to be staying with her on and off was actually Shirley's boyfriend or at least someone with possible romantic interest or involvement with her. He wasn't a suspect, at least not yet, but police certainly had some questions for the guy. Tom Berg reports for the journal Tribune that investigators developed a composite sketch of the man based on the description from the other driver involved in the hit and run accident in Boston. That driver's sister who was also in the car and someone who had seen the guy around town in Pittsfield. The description of the man driving Shirley's vehicle during that hit and run accident in Boston and the man believed to be staying with her on and off before she disappeared, they were both very similar. So here's what we think we know about the mystery man. His name might be Jerry and he could be 5 foot 10 inches tall and about 180 pounds between 33 and 37 years old in 1990 with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, slightly crooked front teeth and pock marks on his face. He is believed to have a southern accent. He might have worked in construction around the Millenocket area. He also may have stayed with relatives in Saco, Maine. Information about Jerry suggested he was in the middle of a divorce from a woman in Massachusetts who was pregnant with twins and as of 1990 he may have had a 12 year old daughter. Investigators stated that Shirley possibly met the man either at a bar in Millenocket or at Funtown USA, a theme park in Saco. Some reports say that the man was from Old Orchard Beach, another source states that according to investigators Jerry may have previously worked in Oklahoma and Virginia and was possibly born in Kentucky. The man may have had access to an older charcoal colored car covered in rust spots, but other reporting states that he didn't actually have a car of his own. At least two composite sketches of this Jerry Fellow have been publicly released since 1990. Both are posted on darkdown east social media platforms and at darkdown east.com. According to reporting by Sharon Mack for the Bangor Daily News, the release of the composite sketch generated about 50 phone calls but investigators weren't optimistic about the tips. The second hit in the NCIC database also fizzled out quickly. One state police looked into a report that Shirley's car was pulled over as part of a routine traffic stop in Florida on August 14. That would have been after she was last seen, but before her description and the car details were entered into NCIC, so by the time investigators caught up with Florida authorities to ask about this traffic stop, memories were already fuzzy. It turns out that the plates on the car in question were the same as Shirley's license plate number, but the Florida officer who stopped the car did not make note of which state the plates were from. The officer also couldn't recall if the car was a red cutlass like Shirley's. After nearly two months since she was last seen, police were left with few concrete details to follow. They had blood in Shirley's house, a car accident in Boston, and a traffic stop in Florida they couldn't confirm was actually Shirley's car and a mystery man named Jerry, but no Shirley. The investigation felt scattered, pieces of a puzzle stretched across states with no clear way to connect them. But that changed when the case took its most unexpected and heartbreaking turn, hundreds of miles from home. On Tuesday, November 20, 1990, a hunter was perched on his truck's tailgate scouting for deer in a wooded area, about five miles off high 95 behind Todd's tavern market, on Route 623 in Spotsylvania, Virginia, when he saw something that looked like a white ball on the surface of the forest floor. What he discovered when he walked closer was that it wasn't a ball, but a human skull and skeletal remains. The body was wrapped in what the hunter described as a curtain, with the person's feet bound by a cord. Jill Higgins reports for the Kennebec journal that investigators later commented that the body was actually found wrapped in a quilt that was heavily stained with "bottily fluids" end quote. Police did not confirm if that meant blood. However, they did comment that the person's feet were bound with a Venetian blind-type cord. Shirley's dentures were imprinted with her name, and that marking was the first indication that the remains belonged to the missing main woman. Jewelry at the scene was also consistent with Shirley's jewelry. Found with the body were two distinctive rings, a 1977 bit of her high school class ring with Shirley's initials, and a mother's ring with two red and one green stone. Dental records later confirmed the identification. Her remains weren't buried, and they were found not very far into the woods off the road, but it was still a very secluded area. According to reporting by Eileen Meade for the freelance star, police theorized that given the location the person who left her there was probably familiar with the area. Investigators planned to search the location again in the coming days to see if they could find the remains of Shirley's dogs. However, subsequent searches did not produce any sign of the dogs, Shirley's car, or a potential murder weapon. With the discovery of Shirley's body, the mystery man went from "wanted for questioning" to an actual "suspect" in her death. Publicly, Jerry appeared to be the primary focus of the case in terms of suspects. Police had stated more than once that Shirley's husband, Brian, was not considered a suspect in the case. So with Jerry MIA, no confirmed sightings of Shirley, and no sign of her dogs or her car, the case seemed to stall. Someone slipped by with little to report until a break finally came. Police recovered Shirley's car also out of state in April of 1991. A Virginia paper reports that it was confiscated near the Georgia Florida border. However, main authorities weren't immediately ready to disclose any specifics about where the car was located. They did share that it had been repainted, presumably to a color other than its original red hue so it would not match the description of the stolen vehicle that was reported to NCIC and ViCap. After thoroughly searching the car for any evidence that could lead to the identity of Jerry, or more information about what happened to Shirley, police confirmed that they'd found a blood stain, but didn't elaborate on who it may belong to. Anything else recovered from the vehicle, fingerprints, fibers, hair, that's not public information. Later reporting suggests that the trail of Shirley's car reached all the way to a holiday inn in St. Augustine, Florida, sometime in late 1990. Sources say that the car was stolen from that parking lot, repainted, and then possibly sold before it was recovered in Dairy in Georgia in 1991. Sharon Mack reports that after seizing the car, police reportedly interviewed a possible suspect in Georgia, but that individual was later released. In the end, the car that once seemed like a key to unraveling Shirley's disappearance offered far fewer answers than anyone hoped. It had traveled across multiple states, changed hands, changed colors, and passed through too many unknowns to yield a clear timeline or a clear suspect. Whatever story it might have held about Jerry, about who less drove it or about what happened to Shirley, remained locked away in evidence that could have been too degraded or too limited or simply too inconclusive to move the case forward. With nothing definitive enough to tie a suspect to the vehicle, investigators were left with the same maddening reality then, as now, the car wasn't the breakthrough they needed. As of 1991, police believed that someone killed Shirley in her home in Pittsfield in August of 1990 and drove her body out of state to Virginia where she was found. That was the only conclusion investigators could publicly make from the investigation at that juncture. Main state police were transparent about the fact that each lead they'd chased so far was nothing but a dead end. They needed something to spark new attention and expand the reach of the investigation because if the killer cross-state lines, then the call for tips needed to cross-state lines too. of October, 1990. 71, Shirley's family and main state police had reportedly tried to get her story on the TV program Unsolved Mysteries. They felt that since her case followed a trail along the entire Eastern Seaboard, some national exposure on a television show could generate new information. However, the producers at Unsolved Mysteries weren't interested. State police later commented they felt like the show only wanted cases that were close to conclusion, or had an identified suspect, Shirley's met neither of those criteria. While their story didn't make it onto Robert Stax list, it was featured in a paper backbook titled "Murderers Among Us" by Stephen G. Mischew and Hugh Ainsworth. If those names ring a bell, it's because their landmark interviews with Ted Bundy became the backbone of Netflix's hit-docky series "Conversations with a Killer," the Ted Bundy tapes. That project helped launch Netflix's entire "Conversations with a Killer" franchise. It shows just how influential Mischew and Ainsworth's reporting has been in shaping some of today's most watched true crime storytelling. The main state police spokesperson at the time said the book was viewed as an opportunity to reach new potential audiences that might have knowledge of Shirley's murder. Since the book would be in airports across the country, it had the potential to land in the hands of someone who recognized the composite sketch of Jerry. The spokesperson, however, would not comment on the accuracy of the information contained in the book beyond the information directly attributed to the main state police. I tracked down a yellowed and torn copy of this book based on what main state police said about the book back in the early 90s, and comments Shirley's friends and family have made about it since the details revealed in the chapter about Shirley should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, there are a few additional pieces of information about the case in the book. The book states that Shirley invited some people to her place for a party on August 8, and the mystery man was among the guests. Other people in attendance said that he told varying stories about who he was and what he did. He told one person his name was Jerry, but others reportedly knew him as Dawn. To some, he said he worked at a mill and millenocket. To others, he said he was an air force mechanic from Virginia. Shirley supposedly told people that the situation between her and Jerry or Dawn was not sexual, and he slept in a different bedroom at her house. Now it's the book that revealed the actual last person to see Shirley was a process server who showed up on her doorstep to serve her with paperwork related to the divorce. That was around 5pm on August 9. That contrasts with what the unnamed friend of Shirley said in earlier newspaper articles about being the last person to see Shirley. I think this discrepancy could be chalked up to an error in reporting, or rather, either author not having the full scope of the timeline due to the open nature of the case, and for what it's worth, a local police officer later confirmed that he, in fact, served Shirley twice with protective orders related to her divorce in the days before her disappearance. The first time he said he saw a man that maybe looked like the composite sketch, though the person he saw had long hair. The second time, the officer didn't see the man, but he also didn't go inside the house. Also, according to the book, Shirley's neighbor saw a man they believed to be Jerry driving away from Shirley's house in her old-smobile cutlass supreme on August 10, 1990. Now remember that unconfirmed red flag I mentioned at the beginning of this story? The one that might have been the first clue to Brian that something was wrong with Shirley? Here's where that comes in. According to Misha and Ainsworth's book, on August 19, Brian received a bill for damage in a car accident in Boston. The other driver in the collision had mailed the repair estimate to the address from the insurance info he got from the driver, which was Brian's name and address. Brian reportedly tried calling Shirley to ask what the heck this was all about, but she didn't answer. A letter to the editor published in the morning Sentinel from an author who identified herself as a friend of Shirley's passionately disagreed with how the book characterized her. Main State Police Detective Dale Lancaster also said after the book was published that the authors took literary license with some of the things they said about Shirley and her lifestyle. Brian McAvoy, too, spoke out about the characterization of his wife and said the description was slanderous and completely bogus. I reached out to Steven Misha, hoping to ask him about the reporting process for the book, but I haven't heard back from him at the time of this episode's recording date. His co-author Hugh Ainsworth passed away in 2023. So given the backlash and reviews from people who knew Shirley best and love her most, the comments made about her in that book don't need repeating. Despite the criticism, the hope at the time was that the book might finally do what months of fragmented leads and jurisdictional hurdles hadn't. Push Shirley's story far enough into the public eye that someone somewhere might come forward with the missing piece. With copies circulating through airports and bookstores and new stands nationwide, Main State Police believe the book could reach the kind of transient, cross-state audience that her case desperately needed, people who might have seen Shirley or the man known as Jerry. But even with the additional exposure, no new, viable tips emerged. No one recognized the sketch to the point of publicly naming a suspect. No one connected themselves to the trail of her car. And no one stepped forward with information that could move the investigation out of its standstill and forward to an arrest. For all the anticipation surrounding the book's release, it ultimately did little to illuminate the truth. In the end, Shirley's case remained exactly where it had been before the book hit the shelves, unsolved, unanswered, and still waiting for the breakthrough that never came. In 1995, Shirley's case was brought back into the National Spotlight when it was featured on the Fox Network series Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. The episode, which aired on November 17, 1995, generated a surge of interest. Dozens of calls poured in from viewers across the country, reporting possible sightings of Jerry from as far as California, Texas, and Florida. But while the broadcast widened to the net of potential leads, Shirley's family was deeply unhappy with the show's reenactment, calling it "distastful." Nearly a decade later, in August of 2004, the family made another push for answers, announcing a $10,000 reward for information leading to the imprisonment of Shirley's killer. The reward came alongside news that a local author named Horace P. Landry had taken up Shirley's case. He studied journalism at Colby College and Yale University and worked as a writer and editor at multiple publications throughout his career. Next newsroom, Horace wrote two fictionalized murder mysteries set in Maine, and he wanted to try his hand at solving a real case. He'd gone about interviewing Shirley's family and friends, hopeful and determined to make headway in a case that had stymied police for years. Shirley's family members were grateful for his dedication and seemed to view his efforts more positively than the authors and producers who had come before him. But sadly, Horace passed away three years later in 2007. If he ever wrote a book or started writing a book about Shirley, I haven't yet found evidence of that. Despite renewed attention and financial incentive, no tip provided the breakthrough Shirley's family and police had spent years hoping for. Shirley McAvoy is remembered first and foremost as a loving mother. Friends said she was incredibly close with her two children and struggled deeply with being separated from them during the divorce. She filled her days with community and connection. She was a devoted volunteer at Manson Park Elementary School and a friendly face in her neighborhood, even often piling some of the kids who lived nearby into her car for swimming trips to Newport. By every account, Shirley was outgoing and warm. One friend described her as a wonderful person with a heart of gold who would help anyone who needed help without any questions asked. But generosity of spirit, that willingness to open her home and her heart is what makes the events of August 1990 so especially painful to reckon with. Her daughter, Christina, was only 12 years old when her mother disappeared. Brian did what he could to shield his children from the worst details, but the truth found its way to them anyway, delivered by a classmate on a playground that her mother had been found not alive, but discarded. It was a moment that changed the course of her childhood. Years later in 2004, Christina voiced what her family had carried for so long, "We just want this guy behind bars and we want to know why he did it." That guy, the man known only as Jerry, remains one of the enduring mysteries of Shirley's case. I want to revisit what we think we know about him one more time, because if there's even a small chance this reaches someone who knows something, I'm going to take it. Jerry had been staying with Shirley often on about five days according to one friend, and depending on who was asked he was either introduced as a relative or understood to be Shirley's boyfriend. the composite sketch from people who had seen him in connection with Shirley or the hit and run in Boston. He was described as five foot ten, about 180 pounds in his mid-30s with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, possibly a southern accent, slightly crooked front teeth, and pock marks on his face. The details of his life, if they are true, paint the picture of a man drifting through states and stories, working construction near milling rockets, staying with relatives and sacco, possibly going through a divorce from a pregnant wife in Massachusetts, perhaps with a daughter of his own. Some reports suggest he had roots in Kentucky or ties to Oklahoma and Virginia. Now what continues to stand out even after all these years is how Virginia repeatedly emerges as a significant point in this case, suggesting a possible connection investigators were never fully able to clarify. Shirley's remains were discovered in a secluded area of Spotsylvania, Virginia, that authorities believed would likely be known to someone familiar with the region. Additionally, some accounts indicate that Jerry may have previously worked in Virginia, or claimed ties to the state through military service. Taken together these details make Virginia more than just the location where Shirley was found. They suggest to me, it may be central to understanding who Jerry is and where he may have come from. Now for listeners who live in Virginia or are originally from there, this is a direct request. Please look at the composite sketch of the man known as Jerry, posted at darkdownys.com, and consider whether you recognize him. If you can, share the sketch within your community or with people who lived in the area in 1990. Your awareness may help provide the critical information needed to move this case forward. Shirley welcomed people into her life with trust and openness, and is devastating to consider that this kindness may have placed her in harm's way, and it is equally heartbreaking that more than 30 years later, the man who may hold the answers about her last hours, about why a mother never came home, has never been identified. For families of victims in unsolved cases, grief is not a moment, but a long-shifting landscape. Seasons pass, children grow up, houses are sold and yet the questions remain untouched, suspended in time. But there is still reason to hope. Advancements in DNA testing could one day shed new light on the evidence collected from Shirley's home, or the oldsmobile recovered in Georgia. The passage of time, too, can shift loyalties and dissolve the silences that once protected hard truths. People age, relationships change, and long-held secrets sometimes become burdensome enough to reveal. Shirley's story has survived because those who love her have never surrendered to silence, and even decades later, time may still be working in her favor, wearing down the barriers that once hid the truth, and giving her case a real chance to finally be solved. If you recognize Jerry, or have any information about the murder of Shirley McAvoy, please contact Main State Police Major Crime's Unit Central at 207-624-7076-extension-9. You may also submit a tip using the form linked in the description of this episode. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram @DarkDown East. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Adria Check. I think Chuck would approve.