The Murder of Shirley McAvoy (Maine)

In late summer of 1990, a mother in central Maine seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, 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, things that didn’t fit with the idea of someone who’d chosen to leave. What started as a missing persons 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.

Last Known Sighting

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 Seekins 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 bedspread to bring the look together. She also spent 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 9th, 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 be 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 rationalized 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. Shirley’s home sat empty. There were no gatherings or visits with friends, no sign of the friendly neighbor on Berry 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 1990 two-door Oldsmobile cutlass Supreme, license plate number 26269P. The vehicle was registered in both Shirley and Brian’s names.

Shirley’s two dogs, a 5-month old husky-shepherd named Max and a 2-year old long haired dog named Nicki, were nowhere to be found.

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 suggest a relatively benign scenario where she just packed up and 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 clean-up crew included someone described as Brian’s girlfriend while another 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 Berry Road. The group at Shirley’s home had found “a substance” and 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 Maine State Police.