AUGUSTA (AP) – A Canaan man was charged Tuesday with murdering his estranged wife, whose body was never found, and the woman he was living with after his wife disappeared, authorities said.

Shannon Roy Atwood, 37, was arrested by state police at the Somerset County Jail, where he has been held since Aug. 13 on terrorizing charges. Atwood, who had been scheduled to be released this week, will remain in jail pending an initial appearance today in Superior Court in Skowhegan.

Atwood was charged in the deaths of Shirley Moon Atwood, 35, and Cheryl Murdoch, 38. His arrest followed months in which he had been the focus of investigations into the fate of the two women.

Murdoch, who had been living with Shannon Atwood prior to her disappearance last summer, was the object of an intensive search that ended Aug. 11 when her body was found in a remote area of Canaan.

“Although the remains of Shirley Atwood have not been recovered, our investigation reveals that she is dead,” said Lt. Gary Wright, head of the state police criminal division. “We have worked closely with the Maine attorney general’s office, which approved the murder charges that were lodged today.”

Although a Maine murder case in which no body has been found is unusual, it is not without precedent. James Hicks was convicted in 1983 of fourth-degree murder, the equivalent of today’s manslaughter, in the death of his wife, Jennie Hicks, 23, who disappeared from the couple’s mobile home in Carmel six years earlier.

Hicks served six years of a 10-year sentence. In 2000 he led police to Jennie Hicks’ body, which was buried in Etna, as well as to the spots in Maine where he buried two other women he had killed.

Wright renewed a public appeal to anyone with information about the location of Atwood’s remains to come forward.

As in the past, police declined to reveal the cause of either woman’s death.

Murdoch, who was from Waterville, became the target of an alert after she vanished ahead of a scheduled visit to Arizona to meet her mother and her 13-year-old daughter.

Shannon Atwood was arrested for terrorizing after he allegedly used a bow and arrow to threaten detectives who arrived to search his house in connection with Murdoch’s death.

As a result of a November plea agreement, Atwood pleaded to one of the two terrorizing counts and was handed a nine-month jail sentence.

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