LEWISTON —  The revelation that a recently deceased Lewiston man may have hidden a murder victim for decades came as a shock to some who knew him.

A woman’s body was found Friday stuffed in an unplugged freezer inside a storage unit rented, since 1992, by Frank Julian of Lewiston.

Police believe there may be a link between the body and a missing-person case involving Julian’s former girlfriend that has been open since 1983.

“Frank was a nice guy. He wasn’t a freak show,” Mark Ferguson, owner of the Village Corner Store in Poland Spring, said Monday.

Ferguson bought cigarette lighters, sunglasses, Patriots, Bruins, and Red Sox gear with unregistered trademarks, and other impulse-buy type items from Julian’s wholesale business for 15 years.

He characterized Julian as a salesman, engaging and personable. “He always tried to sell us twice as much as we bought,” Ferguson said. “He seemed to have made a fairly decent life out of it.”

“Nothing I knew about Frank made me think that he was about to kill some girl and keep her in a storage locker for 20 years,” he said. “. . . I could tell you he gave me the heebie-jeebies and he creeped me out, but that’s not the case.”

The gruesome discovery surprised Jane Child, who knew Julian as a kind shop owner who’d allow customers to put items on layaway when they were short on money. It’s difficult to reconcile that image with a potential killer who stashed a body in a freezer, she told the Associated Press.

“It just gives me the creeps,” Child said Monday while shopping at Blackie’s Fruit Stand, near the store where Julian worked with one of his sons.

Julian made quarterly payments in advance for his space at Moore Self Storage Facility at 11 North Lisbon Road, coming around every three months to pay in person, owner Gary Boilard told The Associated Press. The last payment was made on Sept. 6, and the unit was rented through November, he said.

The remains were found Friday by Julian’s family members while cleaning out his storage locker. Members of Julian’s family declined to speak to the Sun Journal on Monday.

State police will have to rely on DNA testing to determine the identity of a body found in a Lewiston storage locker Friday, spokesman Steve McCausland said Monday evening. But police suspect that the body is that of Julian’s former girlfriend, Kitty I. Wardwell.

A friend reported Wardwell missing in July 1983. She was 29 at the time. She was last seen with Julian, her boyfriend, who told police in Salem, N.H., that he had left her in a motel there after an argument. She was never found.

Julian, who was 52 in 1983 and died Oct. 1, had been living with Wardwell at Greenwood Gardens Apartments in her hometown of Holden before she disappeared. Julian was interviewed at least twice since Wardwell went missing, McCausland said Monday.

State police investigators believed Wardwell was a victim of foul play in Maine, and the case has remained officially open since.

The state Medical Examiner’s Office has received DNA samples from Wardwell’s relatives, and began their examination of the remains Monday, McCausland said. The cause and manner of death will not be released until authorities have identified the body, said Mark Belserene, the office administrator of the state medical examiner. That process can take several days, McCausland said.

Wardwell’s brother Dwight Collins told The Associated Press that the family was waiting for the body to be identified but declined to comment further.

If the body turns out not to be Wardwell’s, “then obviously we’re back to square one,” McCausland said.

State police are asking for people who lived at Greenwood Gardens Apartments in Holden around the time of Wardwell’s disappearance in 1983 to contact them with any information they may have about the former couple.