OLD ORCHARD BEACH (AP) – State police and fire marshal’s investigators Thursday were at the scene of a burned-out house in which three bodies were found as a public safety spokesman labeled the incident suspicious.

The bodies of the victims, whose identities were not immediately confirmed, were taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta following Wednesday’s fire. Investigators at the Cape Cod-style house were looking into the deaths and trying to determine the cause of the fire.

“We have a number of questions we are trying to answer,” said spokesman Stephen McCausland of the state Public Safety Department. He said both the fire and the deaths were suspicious.

The Portland Press Herald said the house was home to an Old Orchard Street businessman and his wife, Chris and Carol Bolduc.

McCausland said the house was in a fairly new residential neighborhood near a golf course in the coastal town, which has a year-round population of nearly 9,000.

John Fitzgerald, Old Orchard Beach’s deputy fire chief, said firefighters were called to the home around 6 p.m. Wednesday and found three bodies inside before they extinguished the fire, which took about 20 minutes.

The blaze left the house heavily damaged inside, but the walls and roof were still standing, McCausland said.

A neighbor of the Bolducs, Jane Littlefield, said several neighbors tried to call the Bolducs on their cell phones when they saw the fire, but neither Carol nor Chris Bolduc answered.

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