The Murder of Theresa “Terry” Duran (Maine)

40 years have passed since 14-year old Terry Duran left her home in Gorham, Maine for some fun on one of the last weekends of summer before she started high school. She told her parents she’d be home Sunday night, but Terry never returned. When her body was discovered weeks later, there was no doubt her death was a homicide, but who would kill this teenage girl and why?

This case has seen two arrests and one trial. And yet, after four decades, her murder is still unsolved.

Disappearance and Death

It was dinner time on Friday, July 27, 1984, and 14-year old Theresa Duran, who preferred the nickname Terry, was out to eat with her parents Irene and Donald. Robert Lowell reports for the Portland Press Herald that Terry was what her mother described as “a typical teenager”. She had a messy bedroom, she was picky about her appearance, and she didn’t always see eye to eye with her parents.

For one, Terry’s mother and father didn’t approve of her older boyfriend. Irene and Don had only met him once, but the Durans told Terry they didn’t like him. Terry knew how they felt, so during that dinner when she told her parents she was going to hang out with some friends for the weekend and was leaving that night, she left out the detail that she planned to see her boyfriend, too.

According to reporting by Donna Halvorson for the Portland Evening Express, Terry was picked up by a friend and left home on Sebago Lake Road in Gorham later that night. The next day, Saturday the 28th, Irene got a call from Terry. She was checking in to let her parents know that she’d be home tomorrow, as planned.

When Sunday afternoon rolled around and then nightfall came and Terry hadn’t shown up yet, her mother was immediately concerned. She had no reason to believe Terry wouldn’t be coming home and Terry hadn’t called to say she was running late or anything like that. Terry always came back when she said she would, so this wasn’t like her.

Irene and Don waited out the night hoping Terry would turn up with a logical explanation, but even without an explanation, they just wanted her to come home. Monday morning, July 31st, arrived with still no word from their daughter, so Irene called Gorham police to report Terry missing.

Terry’s parents were unable to sit still and wait for the police search to locate their daughter, so they drove all around town looking for Terry themselves. One of the very first places they checked was Terry’s boyfriend’s house. Irene said she and Don asked Terry’s boyfriend if Terry was there but he said no. Irene asked if her daughter had been there at all that day, and the boyfriend again said no. Irene and Don left empty handed and more concerned than ever.

Terry didn’t turn up at her boyfriend’s house, or anywhere else, for weeks. The search continued in and around Gorham, but it was as if she vanished without a trace to follow. But then the worst possible development came over Labor Day weekend.

According to an Associated Press report published by the Bangor Daily News, on Sunday, September 2, 1984, two people walking in the woods a few hundred feet from a discontinued section of Plummer Road in Gorham discovered an unidentified body. Early reports state that police believed the woman was in her 20s and may have been dead for at least three weeks. She was fully clothed in dungaree jeans and a dungaree jacket and some personal items were found near her body at the scene.

When the medical examiner’s office confirmed the identity of the remains the next day, it was revealed that the remains were not those of a 20-year old woman, but the 14-year old Terry Duran who had been missing now for more than a month.

Investigation

Police were treating Terry’s death as a homicide. The ME found that Terry died from three gunshot wounds including one to the back of her head. She also had a tiny unidentified hole in her breastbone. The medical examiner, Dr. Henry Ryan, ruled out the injury as a bullet hole and post-mortem animal activity. It looked like it could’ve been caused by a screwdriver or maybe even an icepick.

At the scene in the woods, investigators scoured the area for clues. While they did not locate a murder weapon or anything that could’ve caused the injury to her breast bone, a metal detector helped to uncover two spent .22 caliber bullets and four casings. A firearms expert from the Maine State Crime Lab determined that both of the bullets could have been fired from the same gun and at least one of the casings could have encased one of those bullets.

On closer examination later at the crime lab, a forensic chemist identified three hairs on one of the bullets. One of the hairs looked to be similar in color to Terry’s hair, which was medium brown, but the other two were lighter in color.

According to a report in the Evening Express, also found in the same area as Terry’s body was a car that had been vandalized and abandoned in the woods. When police ran the plates of the 1978 Pontiac, they found it had been reported stolen from East Kidder Street in nearby Portland on July 30, the day Terry was supposed to return home. However, police were quick to dismiss any connection between that vehicle and Terry’s murder.

Four Gorham police officers were actively working the case alongside Maine State Police. They conducted interviews to piece together a timeline of Terry’s movements and get an understanding of her social circle and the overwhelming consensus from friends was that Terry didn’t have a single enemy. She had an outgoing personality and got along with pretty much everyone. She didn’t cause trouble and she was known for being fun-loving and up for anything.

They did learn, however, that Terry was seen alive on the day she was supposed to go home, that Sunday, July 30th. A witness told police he saw Terry on a dirt bike riding three-up with her boyfriend and a friend of theirs, a guy named Mark Parker. The witness remembered the incident because it looked dangerous with all three of them somehow piled up on the bike together and speeding off. He said the trio was leaving a house not far from where her body was eventually found. The home belonged to the father of a guy named Lewis Chase, known by the nickname “Chipper”.

Suspects

Chipper Chase was well-known to local and state police in Maine. According to reporting by the Evening Express, Chipper was 19-years old when he was arrested in Bridgton, Maine on October 15, 1984 for aggravated assault and robbery. He was accused of severely beating a man’s head and body in a rural area off the Weeks Road in Gorham and taking the man’s wedding ring. When Chipper was booked at Cumberland County Jail, he was also put on a hold order by the Department of Probation and Parole because as it turned out, Chipper had been on the run after escaping from the Maine Youth Center, now known as Long Creek Youth Development Center, Maine’s only secure juvenile facility.

Chipper was either released on bail or escaped again, because a few months later in February of 1985, he led police on an hours-long chase in the woods as he tried to escape arrest for burglary and theft of firearms charges. According to reporting by the Lewiston Daily Sun, the pursuit broke out around 10:30 a.m. on February 19 after Chipper drove his car into the woods off Route 37 near the Bridgton town line and fled on foot. Police dogs and officers on snowmobiles pursued the suspect in the area surrounding Little Moose Pond and finally caught him around 5 p.m.

Maine State Police had been wanting to speak with Chipper as part of their investigation into Terry Duran’s murder, since a witness placed Terry at his father’s house, or at least leaving his father’s house, on the day she was last seen alive. Investigators questioned Chipper that spring of 1985, what would be the first of several conversations with the man.

According to an AP report in the Lewiston Daily Sun, each time police spoke with Chipper, he had something different to say about Terry’s death and who might be responsible. During the first interview, Chipper pointed the finger at one person he said killed Terry. In other interviews, he blamed someone else. At one point, he suggested that his own brother killed Terry. Police checked out this story and were apparently satisfied with the brother’s alibi for the date and time of the murder. They didn’t think Chipper’s brother did it…But Chipper himself landed on the list of suspects. However, Maine State Police Detective Peter Herring would only say that Chipper was a suspect, not the prime suspect.

In October of 1985, a whole year into the investigation of Terry Duran’s murder, Chipper was serving his sentence for aggravated assault, burglary, theft of firearms and other charges at the Maine Correctional Center. But one day, he and another inmate disappeared on their walk back to the dormitory following a meal at the dining hall. Witnesses reported seeing Chipper and the other guy scaling a fence and escaping the prison grounds.

As reported by Robert Kessell for the Lewiston Daily Sun, for days, local and state police alongside sheriff’s deputies from multiple counties were on the lookout for the two escapees. Sightings were called in all over Bridgton, including one terrifying report of Chipper seen carrying a rifle. The .30-.06 caliber rifle was believed to have been stolen from a camp on Little Moose Pond, the same area where Chipper was apprehended a few months earlier. Multiple residents reported break-ins and burglaries at their homes in the area. Their camouflage clothing, food, and firearms turned up missing.

The manhunt for Chipper and the other escapee continued for well over a week before hunters stumbled upon the body of a man in the woods off Harbor Road in Lovell. The remains were later identified as the other escapee, not Chipper. The state Medical Examiner’s office determined that the man died from a gunshot wound to the head, though the circumstances of his death were still under investigation. Reports in 1986 state that it was being treated as suicide.

In late November 1985, an indictment for Chipper Chase was handed down by a Cumberland County grand jury relating to his escape from prison and charges that had racked up while Chipper was on the run. Reports state that he was suspected of at least six vehicle thefts in the towns of Standish, Bridgton, Gorham and Portland. He remained at large for months.

Chipper was finally apprehended more than 1600 miles south in Miami, Florida on June 15, 1986. The Miami News reports that Maine State Police received a tip that Chipper might be in south Florida and they notified officers there. Given the laundry list of violent offenses to his name, the Miami Beach SWAT team was sent in to arrest Chipper outside an apartment on 15th street. He was held at Dade County Jail prior to extradition.

While in custody, Chipper made several statements to Florida police. He told them he knew who killed a 14-year old girl in Maine two years earlier. Florida authorities shared the information with Maine State Police who, of course, had already spoken to Chipper about Terry’s murder more than once. But this time, he implicated someone new.

Arrests

In this new interview following his arrest in Florida, Chipper Chase told police that Terry Duran’s killer was her boyfriend and his friend Mark Parker.

Now, both Mark and the boyfriend had been on the case radar since the beginning after a witness placed Terry, Mark, and the boyfriend together on that dirt bike the day of the murder. Police had interviewed both suspects at least twice during the initial investigation back in the fall of 1984, but the investigation in the two years since hadn’t developed a strong enough case against either Mark or Terry’s boyfriend to make an arrest.

Chipper’s statement changed that though. And interestingly, within a week, another witness surfaced to make the accusation even stronger. A woman told police that Mark had confessed to her that he killed Terry. That was the corroborating evidence investigators needed. A little less than a month later, news broke that police had made not one, but two arrests for the murder of Terry Duran.

On July 24, 1986, almost two years to the day since she died, 18-year old Mark Parker and the other 17-year old suspect were arrested on murder charges. Documents from a pretrial bail hearing for Mark Parker indicate that evidence showed the killing was likely premeditated, though the Assistant AG later conceded that the motive for the two suspects for killing Terry was obscure. The state didn’t need to prove motive at trial though; that wasn’t their burden.

Terry’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.