READFIELD — One day in early 2005, wind blew cold over the hard-packed snow sloping down the hill toward the frozen banks of Torsey Lake, dark except for the glow, high above, where students skied under the lights of the lodge at Kents Hill School.

Meg Richardson wasn’t among them. She’d parked herself on a couch, hot chocolate in hand, and nothing in the world could convince her going out in that was a better idea.

But Marlee Johnston had other ideas. Friends since they started piano lessons years ago, she spotted Meg and brightly coaxed her, in that Marlee way that could persuade anyone to march down a snow-clad mountain just for the thrill of it: “Come up, let’s race down the hill; we gotta get out there,” she said. “Com’on; we’ll race down on our stomachs to warm up!”

Like that, the 13-year-olds were off, singing, smiling.

That was Marlee, and in less than a year, she’d be gone.

On Nov. 26, 2005, 14-year-old Patrick Armstrong murdered Marlee Johnston in their affluent neighborhood in the small town of Fayette.

The families were neighbors on a cul-de-sac along the shores of Lovejoy Pond. The teens had been friends but had drifted apart.

The Saturday following Thanksgiving, Marlee invited Armstrong to take a walk with her two Pekingese dogs. At some point during the walk, the boy returned home and retrieved a baseball bat. 

After pleading guilty to her murder in 2006, Armstrong was ordered to serve 16 years of a 25-year sentence, followed by four years of probation. He was the youngest person ever convicted of murder in Maine.

He is eligible for release from Maine State Prison in Warren in May 2021.

A decade later

Ted Johnston knows almost every face at Peppers Garden & Grill. The Winthrop establishment where he orders his BLTs with mayo — hold the olives — has been a family favorite for over a decade. Restaurant owner and friend Jon Russell donates chili to fundraisers the Johnstons hold in Marlee’s memory.

Glancing around, Johnston greets folks warmly, cracking a joke or politely inquiring about their health, in this order: a former member of the Maine House of Representatives, Russell, his son’s friend’s father and his nephew, all in the span of half an hour.

He knows that the evening bartender has just started a small business, and another bartender has a twin sister who works in Portland, and can relate, in glorious detail, how the former bar owner loved stock car racing. When a reporter tried to pay for a cup of tea, he was told it was on the house because he was with Ted.

Peppers shares a close link to the family. Marlee’s photo hangs above the bar. Russell attended Marlee’s service and was the first face in the crowd Ted recognized. They consider each other family, and catch up at least once a week at the restaurant.

“Peppers is our ‘Cheers’ bar,” said Marlee’s mother, Marlene Thibodeau.

A decade after Marlee’s death, the Johnston family has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through a trio of golf, ski and ride fundraisers dedicated not only to doing the considerable good Marlee would have done, but to living happily and vibrantly.

“It’s not the memorial, like some funeral dirge. It’s a celebration. And what are we celebrating? Young people who are having fun,” Johnston said. “Just like Marlee.”

Richardson, Marlee’s childhood friend who is now 24, said the Johnson family’s dedication to their daughter’s memory “continues to empower a group of young people to live fearlessly happy.”

“I think Marlee would be incredibly proud,” Richardson said.

To understand Ted and Marlene’s reaction to their daughter’s murder, you must understand the “Ted effect,” parts charisma and integrity that make friends and family want to leap up and follow him.

“He just wants to give back, just part of his nature,” said Steve Bell, Kents Hill director of winter sports.

Ted’s good nature stands out, Bell said, although pain is there. But instead of withdrawing and being bitter, the family went in another direction: Marlee’s direction.

“No one wanted to lose that energy; if they did, they’d lose her ultimately,” Marlee’s cousin Aron Chalou said. “You have a choice, as to which thing you’re going to focus on. The horrific action or the wonderful, bright spirit in the world?”

Every year, proceeds from the Marlee Johnston Memorial Ski Race at Kents Hill — where Marlee was planning to attend school when she turned 15 — pays for ski gear, helping kids who could never afford it. But the race was just the first fundraiser.

Ted Johnston was golfing with longtime buddies when they suggested a golf tournament: Today, the Marlee Johnston Memorial Golf Tournament held in June is endowed with $250,000 and offsets tuition costs at Kents Hill.

Marlee’s Ride, a motorcycle tour and raffle in Winthrop in May, helps pay for young girls to attend summer camp at Camp Mechuwana and the Julia Clukey Summer Camp for Girls at the Kennebec Valley YMCA.

Marlee moments

Chalou, 36, remembers feeling afraid at the prospect of going tubing on Lovejoy Pond, when Marlee — 12 years younger — offered to help.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go with you, it’ll be OK. I’ll be right there with you,’” Chalou recalled. “She was afraid I was going to miss out on something everyone else was enjoying.”

She loved to swim. When she was 13, Ted got a call from the Winthrop Middle School wondering why Marlee went to school with wet hair. “She didn’t,” Ted thought, but when he asked, the truth came out. There was never any guile to Marlee.

One fall day, between leaving the house for the bus stop and getting on the bus she’d skipped down to the garage, changed into her swimsuit and paddled around the pond, keeping an ear out for the bus.

“She’d come out blue. She didn’t care,” Ted said, laughing. 

Marlee was an athlete, a musician and a singer. Her opposition to sitting still extended to reading: She kept a different book in every room and had read “Pride and Prejudice” by the third grade. Once faced with a pop quiz by her incredulous father — whom she called “Pop” — she recited the plot of “Lord of the Rings,” even later correcting scenes from the movie.

She loved to ski and joined an after-school program at the Joanne and Dick O’Connor Alpine Training Center at Kents Hill. Her brother Alec Johnston was a powerful skier; Marlee had grace on the slopes, Ted said.

It was Alec who found Marlee’s body. He never suspected Patrick. Alec’s first instinct was to run to the Armstrongs’ house nearby; Betty Armstrong, Patrick’s mother, was a nurse.

Weeks later, it was Alec who thought of starting a race in his sister’s name. He members turning to Coach Bell and saying, “Jeez, wouldn’t a race be fun?”

Even though he was proud of the memorial race, “I had to deal with a lot of anger and grief,” Alec said. For a while, he felt lost. He had trouble in college, eventually taking a semester off to volunteer as 2010 gubernatorial candidate Steve Abbott’s driver. 

With time, the pain lessened. Now an electrical engineer and officer in the Maine Air National Guard, Alec — like his father — drops everything to help out with the Marlee fundraisers. And Alec volunteers twice a week at the ski center at Kents Hill.

Thinking about his family’s grief, Alec believes that “if we had let that fester and set, not created the fund, work in that direction, I really think we would have had a tough time getting to where we are now.”

Saturday was the 10th annual Marlee Johnston Memorial Ski Race. As snow softly fell, 150 middle and high school students in tie-dye T-shirts sped down the hill toward Torsey Lake, as Marlee had done a decade ago.

“It’s not that I want anybody to feel our pain. But when they’re here, there’s a connection,” Ted said.  

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Lynn McHatten, whose daughter went to school with Marlee. “She was a singular girl.”

Erin St. Pierre played soccer with Marlee at Winthrop Middle School. Now 24, she recalled how Marlee’s magnetic personality could unite even the most disparate cliques.

“She was always happy,” St. Pierre said.

The Kents Hill connection

On Wednesday, Pat McInerney, head of school at Kents Hill, watched from his first-floor office inside iconic Bearce Hall — a 140-year-old brick Colonial Revival with a gilded bell tower — as 200 students from across the world navigated the icy walkways between classes.

Every year, two local Kents Hill students receive scholarship aid, without which they likely could not afford to attend the private boarding school. Outside, in the distance, rose sounds of construction on a new 15,000-square-foot dining hall as McInerney mused on the special connection between the school and the Johnston family.

“We’re in debt to the family, without any question,” McInerney said, “not just the school — the whole area.” 

Marlee Johnston had wanted to walk here, too. Her brother, Alec, was a senior when she died, and there was something in her that was attracted to the school. Perhaps it was the school’s core values: leadership, courage, friendship, honesty and altruism, among others. Marlee, after all, had used the words “kind, compassionate and caring” to describe herself on her application.

In a way, Marlee’s death intertwined her family and Kents Hill on a permanent, personal level.

Many school administrators consider them friends, even family. Anne Richardson, director of strategic planning and initiatives for Kents Hill, recalled immediately after Marlee’s murder that there was an outpouring of sentiment from the staff to do something to help.

Alec stayed out of school, so staff members regularly visited the home, she said. Sometimes they brought a meal, and Alec liked to hear news about the school.

Mostly, they talked about the little things.

“You can’t fly under the radar at Kents Hill,” Alec said this week. “Throughout your time there, people have a stake in your success because they care above and beyond their job.”

For years, Ted and Marlene hosted international students during school break. Once, two British girls more attuned to the flute than rural recreation took an interest in guns, a novelty. Ted took them to the skeet-shooting range and put them on ATVs.

A Japanese student nicknamed “Sho” — short for Shogun — arrived in Maine without a winter coat. The Johnstons provided a coat and flannel-lined jeans. He, in turn, took the family to an authentic sushi meal in Portland.

“But it really came to bear in terms of how much the school was part of our community when we lost Marlee,” Ted said. “Our town, our neighbors, professional people we knew, our friends, extended family, and Kents Hill School in its entirety, were very, very supportive.” 

Coping with the loss

The Johnstons were forced to grieve publicly. In certain circles Ted, the former director of the Maine Forest Products Council, longtime lobbyist and political junkie, is well-known across the state. Family members have a game: Wherever they are in the world, they’ll drop Ted’s name and try not to act too surprised when someone invariably knows him.

Marlene is a member of Maine Sen. Susan Collins’ staff.

Marlee’s murder drew national media attention and Armstrong’s prosecution was covered extensively in Maine.

Each family member dealt with her loss in their own way. Ted said he talks about his grief to push it away; Alec and Marlene internalize.

But the family’s network of friends and family was always there. As they sought and struggled for privacy, Marlene’s nephew — a Marine recently returned from a tour in Iraq — stood sentinel at the end of the driveway and screened phone calls. Sunday, the day after her murder, he handed Ted the phone. It was then-U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Snowe, who married former Maine Gov. John McKernan in 1989, lost her 20-year-old stepson to a heart ailment in 1991.

“She said, ‘People are going to tell you time heals and it gets better. It doesn’t. You just get better at dealing with it,’” Ted said.

“That was the most true thing I’ve heard in my life,” he said.

The Johnstons think of Marlee every day, and say they’ve arrived at the point now where they can remember the good and work to accomplish it. 

Still, restaurant owner Russell worries about them.

Sometimes, when a certain song comes on at the restaurant, he’ll catch Ted’s eye and they share a glance and look toward the photo of Marlee.

She’s smiling.

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