Bangor Ghost Hunters searching Androscoggin River for missing Jay girl's remains

Anyone with information related to the disappearance of Kimberly Ann Moreau is asked to contact Harold Murray, lead investigator of the Bucksport Chapter of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association at 207-659-4053 or bangorghost@hotmail.com.

Harold Murray, left, leader of the Bucksport Chapter of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association, explains Saturday's search plan for the 24-year-old remains of Kimberly Ann Moreau, who disappeared in May 1986 at the age of 17. Volunteer Mike Watts of Farmington, bent over at center, and ghost hunters Jennie King, squatting, Tamra Terry, and Felicia Woodbury, far right, look on.

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- Terry Karkos/Sun Journal

Harold Murray, left, leader of the Bucksport Chapter of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association, helps team psychic Felicia Woodbury down the Swift River bank at the Mexico boat launch prior to taking off in canoes for a four-day search of islands and river banks along the Androscoggin River for the remains of Kim Moreau, a 17-year-old Jay teen who disappeared in 1986.

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- Terry Karkos/Sun Journal

Members of Bangor Ghost Hunters Association get their gear and canoes to the Mexico Boat Launch on Friday. Dick Moreau, left, of Jay, hugs Tamra Terry, a paranormal investigator prior to the group's launch to search islands for the remains of Moreau's daughter, Kim, who has been missing since May 9, 1986. Waiting to hug Moreau are team members Jennie King, right, and Felicia Woodbury, partially hidden. In back, team leader Harold Murray heads to the canoes.

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- Terry Karkos/Sun Journal

Farmington iron worker and gold prospector Mike Watts paddles down the Swift River on Friday to join members of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association in their four-day search of islands and the river for the remains of Kimberly Moreau, a 17-year-old Jay girl who disappeared May 9, 1986.

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- Terry Karkos/Sun Journal

Ghost investigators Harold Murray, center, and Felicia Woodbury, of the Bucksport Chapter of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association, head down the Swift River in Mexico with volunteer Mike Watts of Farmington to start their four-day search of islands in the Androscoggin River for the remains of Kimberly Ann Moreau, a 17-year-old Jay girl who vanished on May 9, 1986.

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- Terry Karkos/Sun Journal

DIXFIELD — Shards of brown beer bottles and the sun-bleached white carapace of a long-dead crawdad competed for the attention of Mike Watts and Jennie King on Saturday on the rocky shore of “Island No. 10” in the Androscoggin River.

However, Watts, a Farmington iron worker, and King, a college student from Brewer and the newest member of the Bucksport Chapter of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association, were looking for the remains of Kimberly Ann Moreau.

The 17-year-old Jay teenager was last seen leaving her Jewell Street home on the night of May 9, 1986, with an unknown person who was driving a late-model, white Trans-Am.

She was wearing a white blouse, blue jeans, white high-top sneakers, and a man's class ring engraved “Mike 1987” and “Mike Staples.”

Images of human bones and white high-top sneakers exposed to the elements for 24 years weighed heavily on the minds of Watts and King as they slowly waded through poison ivy and brush to a woody debris field about 40 feet inland.

They paused long enough to poke the ground with long, thin metal rods used to find bodies buried underground.

“If a body's been underground for years, there's going to be a hollow down there,” Watts said.

They left a metal detector near the crawdad, 7 miles downriver from the Mexico boat launch where they and other members of the Ghost Hunters set off at 3:40 p.m. Friday in canoes on the search.

“My daughter was dead within four hours, I'm going to say, of when we last saw her,” Dick Moreau said.

“So, it's never been any hope we'd find her alive," he said. "It's finding her remains and putting her to rest down there at the Holy Cross Cemetery. We got a stone there for her last year, with her picture right on it.”

Kim was declared legally dead in 1993. Her case remains unsolved.

Dick Moreau, who has spent the past few decades searching in vain for closure, mentally gripped a slim ray of hope at a Route 2 pullout along the river a mile east of the Dixfield police station.

“No one's ever searched the river to my knowledge,” he said, standing near Ghost Hunters team leader Harold Murray, its psychic Felicia Woodbury, paranormal investigator Tamra Terry, and King.

He'd trucked their gear and canoes to the launch after they drove in from Bangor. Watts, a gold prospector, joined them there to help during the four-day search.

Previous psychics who've helped Dick Moreau told him that Kim was within a 5- or 6-mile radius of his house.

The Ghost Hunters, a team of volunteers who search for lost Maine towns, signs of paranormal activity and unexplained phenomena, began helping him in June 2009, searching land within that radius in Jay, Livermore Falls and Canton.

This weekend, they're searching islands and river banks from Mexico to Livermore Falls. By 11:30 a.m. Saturday, they'd searched eight islands.

An hour later, Murray, a self-taught archaeologist, Terry and Woodbury, a self-professed psychic and ghost whisperer, searched Island No. 9 while Watts and King did Island No. 10.

“The psychics have pinpointed where she is, they just can't give me a road map to get to her,” Dick Moreau said.

“I've had them say, 'She's (on the) side of a brook, and there's some big rocks and big trees,' and I said, 'You know what? I live in the state of Maine. I mean, how many rocks and big trees and brooks can I find? Give me something that is very, very unique that I can find, and now you give me something to go by.

“Like if you told me I'm going to find her and there's going to be a big white birch and there's a gray granite rock there, or there's a black granite rock. Now, I've got something to look for," Moreau said. "That makes a heck of a lot of difference. But that's what it's always been: 'She's over there and that's what you'll find.'”

They've never had that missing specific until now with the Ghost Hunters sleuthing for Kim, he said.

“Harold has something specific to search the river, but I don't know what it is,” he said.

Murray said he was keeping mum on the detail so as not to disappoint Moreau if it doesn't pan out. He said they have information of possible activity on the river.

Prior to launching on Friday, he pointed out islands on the river in Dixfield on a DeLorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer opened to pages 18 and 19, while sharing search plans with Watts and the team.

“We're going to start searching the islands right down here, because this is what we had, that she was brought to Dixfield,” Murray said. “We saw it in a report that someone said she was thrown in the river right in the next town, so I said we're going to do it. We came up here (to Mexico) just in case someone was wrong with the location.”

It's the team's first missing person search; an experiment, Murray called it. They've searched the Meadow View area of Canton, which is 4.3 miles by air from the Moreau home, and where Woodbury and other Ghost Hunters psychics may have found a lingering spirit.

“Ever since my great-grandmother died in 2000, I've been able to see ghosts, and I'm considered a psychic,” Woodbury said.

“I see ghosts and speak with them and they speak to me," she said. "There's one spot (in Meadow View) that I picked up on something, but I don't know. I know the other psychics on our team did pick up on something, too, but they didn't confirm what it was. So, I don't know if it's Kim or not.”

“We do investigate the unexplained and Kim's unexplained,” Murray said. But this weekend, they're looking for Kim's bones and not her ghost.

It's renewed hope for Dick Moreau, who has taped more than 10,000 missing-child fliers to telephone poles in the search radius since Kim went missing.

“We had a lot of things indicating other places, like the party scene in Canton down on Meadow View, and I still don't rule that out, and that's the hard part,” he said.

“At least this will give us answers and eliminate another possibility," he said. "But I'll be honest with you. The only way we're going to find her is with God's hand guiding us, because after 24 years of not looking for much, we're looking for elbows, knees, those kinds of things. That's what we're looking for and it will take God's help to locate it.

“I said a long time ago, this isn't about any revenge. It isn't about anything else, just bringing Kim home, whatever needs to be done.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

A group from the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association walks along the shore of the Androscoggin River in Dixfield on Saturday in search of the remains of Kim Moreau who was last seen on May 9, 1986. Team members, from back left, are Felicia Woodbury, Tamra Terry, Jennie King, Mike Watts and Harold Murray.

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Harold Murray of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association holds an animal bone and a piece of pottery found during their search for the remains of Kim Moreau.

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- Jose Leiva/Sun Journal

Harold Murray of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association searches the shoreline for the remains of Kim Moreau who was last seen on May 9, 1986. The ghost hunters were searching the shores and islands along a section of the Androscoggin River in Dixfield on Saturday.

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- Jose Leiva/Sun Journal

Mike Watts, a volunteer with the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association, probes one of the islands along the Androscoggin River for the remains of Kim Moreau of Jay who was last seen on May 9, 1986. The ghost hunters were searching the shores and islands along a section of the river in Dixfield on Saturday.

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- Jose Leiva/Sun Journal

Harold Murray, left, of the Bangor Ghost Hunters Association draws a map in the dirt for Dick Moreau, father of Kim Moreau, who was last seen on May 9, 1986. Murray shows the area they plan to search for her remains. The ghost hunters were searching the shores and islands along a section of the Androscoggin River in Dixfield on Saturday.

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- Jose Leiva/Sun Journal