FAYETTE – Marlee Johnston was remembered Monday as being happy, positive, life-loving, courageous, athletic, a talented musician, avid reader – an all around “wonderful young lady.”
The 14-year-old girl’s body was found in Lovejoy Pond within a quarter-mile of the family’s home on 434 Lovejoy Shores Drive early Saturday afternoon.
The state medical examiner has ruled her death a homicide.
“We do know the cause of death but at our request the medical examiner’s office is not releasing it,” Maine Deputy Attorney General Bill Stokes, chief of the criminal division, said Monday.
Maine State Police worked from Saturday through Sunday afternoon in Fayette gathering evidence and interviewing neighbors. Stokes declined to say if there were any suspects in the case.
The eighth-grade Winthrop Middle School student had gone out to walk the family’s two dogs after watching a movie with the family during a lazy Saturday morning, Johnston’s father, Ted Johnston, said Monday.
Johnston and his wife, Marlene Thibodeau, and their two children, Alec, 17, a senior at Kents Hill School, and Marlee, had decided to work on essays after the movie.
But first, Marlee went out to walk the dogs.
“That’s when it happened,” Johnston said as his voice broke and he struggled for composure.
The family received a call from a neighbor probably 25 to 30 minutes after Marlee went out, he said. The neighbor told them one of their Pekingese dogs was barking at her door with its leash still on.
It wasn’t unusual for Marlee to be gone that long, he said, because she usually took the dogs around the loop several times.
The entrance to the dead-end road off Route 17 is marked by two stone columns, and the road loops around through the neighborhood and has several lanes off it leading down to the pond.
Johnston said the family thought Marlee had perhaps stopped at a friend’s house, which she sometimes did, and hooked the leash of the dog outside, where it came loose.
It took another 10 to 15 minutes for the family to find Marlee, Johnston said.
The second dog had stayed with Marlee and barked, which led Alec to find his sister in the water in the cove off Loon Watch Lane, Johnston said.
Alec pulled his sister out of the water, Johnston said, and “I did (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on her for a half-hour.”
Both father and son are firefighters. Alec is a captain of the junior firefighter squad, on the Fayette Volunteer Fire Department.
“If you can’t be safe in a neighborhood like this, I don’t know where you can be safe,” Johnston said. “Everybody is so positive.”
The family has lived in Fayette since 1986, he said.
“This is a lovely community,” he said. “It’s bizarre. It’s insane. It just doesn’t make sense. You read about this happening in other places … not about Fayette, not about Lovejoy Shores Drive.”
Johnston said Marlee had been “very excited” about her plans to attend Kents Hill School, an academic preparation school for college, next year.
“They didn’t come any better,” Johnston said of his daughter, who always had a smile on her face.
There are so many Marlee stories, he said.
“She thought life was great,” he said.
He told about Marlee being rushed to the hospital when she was 9 years old and he and his wife were in a panic. She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, he said, and took the lead and gave herself her first shot at the hospital. She was asking intelligent questions, and “We were basket cases.”
“Our kids are strongly independent, self-reliant, self-assured. … They don’t come any better,” he said.
Winthrop Schools Superintendent Terry Despres said a crisis team was activated Monday at the Winthrop Middle School to help students, staff and anyone else who needed to talk.
Comments are no longer available on this story