WEST PARIS – Most residents along Tuelltown Road keep to themselves most days. But many found themselves suddenly seeking out one another this weekend after investigators made a frightful discovery Saturday evening in the small town of West Paris.

And with that discovery came more cars, people and traffic along the rural road in central Oxford County than residents are accustomed to in the course of a normally quiet weekend.

“It’s a very quiet road. We didn’t know anything,” said Judy Sellers, who lives down the road from the home where detectives discovered two dead men Saturday afternoon. “We’re so separated that you really don’t know one another.”

Maine State Police investigators found homeowner Timothy Mayberry, 50, dead outside his 89 Tuelltown Road bungalow and his friend, Todd Smith, 43, of South Paris, dead inside the home. The men were discovered after a passing motorist spotted Mayberry’s body on a stone wall running alongside the road near his property.

Sellers said she was home with her husband, Bob, for most of the day on Saturday and wasn’t even aware of the full-scale investigation going on right up the road until a friend from town phoned later that evening. The couple said they’d traveled the road earlier in the day to run errands in West Paris, but never noticed anything out of the ordinary when they drove past at about 10 a.m. Saturday.

But despite the suspicious deaths less than a mile from her 19th century home – which she and her husband ran as a bed and breakfast for several years – Sellers said she still feels safe nestled among the western Maine mountains. She pointed out that criminal activity can happen anywhere these days – even on a rarely traveled road with picturesque, panoramic valley views.

“You can’t predict something like this and you can’t predict how you’ll react to it,” said Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant. “Isolated incidents like this are tragic. It changes the feeling of a neighborhood, but it certainly doesn’t change the people.”

Gallant spoke about increased crime as a problem not only facing small towns in western Maine, but also rural communities across the country. With a career in law enforcement spanning nearly 30 years, he added that he’s seen this unfortunate shift first hand over the years.

While investigators scoured the roadside ditches, Jen McKay and her roommate, Owen Kennedy, watched from their home across the street. The couple said they were out late Friday night at a movie and didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary until investigators descended Saturday evening.

Like the Sellers, McKay and Kennedy moved to western Maine’s seemingly quiet hills two years ago. The couple knew Mayberry and both described him as a nice guy.

But not everyone in the rural West Paris neighborhood feels 100 percent safe.

Robert Bergman, who has lived for 17 years with his family on Pinnacle Mountain Road – not far from Tuelltown Road – wondered whether or not the deaths were drug-related. The possibility, he contended, wouldn’t surprise him.

“People keep pretty much to themselves,” Bergman said. “It’s pretty scary. It’s pretty close to home.”