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Smith, Sharon September 4, 1980 ME; Bangor
Topic Started: Jun 26 2016, 03:15 PM (291 Views)
Ell
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Maine woman Sharon Smith was reported missing more than 36 years ago and local police were close to giving up the search. However, based on recently received information, the cold case file was reopened on Thursday.

After obtaining a search warrant, detectives went to a home in Bangor where her boyfriend once lived and began searching the area. Trying to find the buried remains of Smith, they brought in a small excavator and began digging up the yard.




According to police spokesman Sergeant Tim Cotton, a small house used to stand in the area being dug up, but now only holds a few rose bushes and a vegetable garden. Investigators used rakes and trowels to look for any trace evidence. Investigators were also looking for blood, clothing, or any other item that may contain DNA, read a police press release.

While Smith’s remains were not found, investigators did find small pieces of plastic. Jars of dirt and other debris were also collected by evidence technicians. A cadaver dog was also there to sniff the dirt, but by early afternoon, the excavator was filling the hole back up.

The week before the dig, ground-penetrating radar equipment was used to look for anything possibly hidden under the surface. Using the results, detectives were able to get a search warrant allowing them to excavate the property.

As reported by the Bangor Daily News, authorities have not released the new information that prompted the search. The court records related to the search warrant were also withheld and the attorney general’s office has refused to comment.

Sharon Smith, a mother of two children, was 25 years old when she disappeared September 4, 1980. She was a dancer at the Paramount Lounge in Bangor. The adult entertainment lounge ultimately closed in 1983 after failing to pay utility bills.

“This is still a missing person’s case. We don’t know exactly what happened to Sharon, but we know she never returned after that point in time,” said Cotton.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/3246570/missing-m...AS87Fx4G7bbI.99
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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Ell
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http://bangordailynews.com/2016/06/23/news...ing-since-1980/
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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tatertot
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http://www.wlbz2.com/news/local/family-fri...otten/382214129

Family, friends of missing man fear he will be forgotten
Zach Blanchard, WLBZ 7:53 PM. EST January 04, 2017

BANGOR, Maine (NEWS CENTER) – The search for Paul Francis II is still underway, but dwindling according to family and friends of Francis.

Francis has been missing since December 2.

“We’re at just over a month,” Robert Kerns said. He spearheaded the independent search since the beginning.

Despite a number of volunteers rallying behind them, Kerns said they have hit a wall partly because police are not talking to them.

"It's actually doing more harm to the family than not to not hear something,” he said.

Francis or "June Bug" is among dozens of people still missing in the state—some dating as far back as 1971.

"The cases that are unsolved you still carry them with you,” Retired Bangor Detective Ed Thorne said.

Thorne reflected on the case of Sharon Smith who went missing in Bangor in 1980.

Smith’s daughter Mandy Clark says it took her going to police ten years later to get them to look. That is when she met Detective Thorne.

"She didn't even have a photo of her mother so I gave her a photo of her mother,” Thorne said.

"That was my mom and I look at her picture and don't even know who she is and that's not fair," Clark said.

Clark, now with a son of her own who may never meet his grandmother, said she still holds out hope.

"I don’t want to give up. They shouldn't give up either,” she said.

Even Thorne admits the case fell through the cracks, buts says they have not given up either.

"The detectives don't give up on them. If something new comes in they follow up on it,” he said.

A search of Hermon property for Smith’s body in June proved that in the case despite it turning up empty.

For all of the people with relatives missing across the state, including Francis' family Clark has words of reassurance.

"It gets easier I guess, but you never forget. Every day you think about it. Every day I think about how life would be different if my mom was here,” Clark said.

Whether it is 33 days or 36 years, the friends of Francis are still looking for that closure.

"Good bad or ugly we need to know what happened to him. He's got a 2 year old son who doesn't have a father and I'm not leaving until I know what happened to him,” Kerns said.
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Ell
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BANGOR, Maine — When Sharon Smith disappeared nearly 36 years ago, her siblings weren’t immediately worried.

“She had run away so many times, she was that type of person,” her brother Randy Smith of Lakeland, Florida, said Monday by phone. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, she’s missing.’ It was more, ‘She’ll be back next week.’”

But she didn’t come back.

The 25-year-old mother of two was last seen on or about Aug. 25, 1980, when she worked an evening shift at the Paramount Lounge, a gritty hotel bar in downtown Bangor known for its adult entertainment where she worked as a waitress and, occasionally, as a stripper.

Her motherCarolee Smith, reported Sharon Smith missing at the time, resulting in a police investigation that appeared to go nowhere over the years until last month, when investigators dug up a property in Hermon looking for Sharon Smith’s body.
Suddenly, the surviving members of Sharon Smith’s family were given hope for resolution, and memories of the young woman and her disappearance came flooding back.

“My first thought was, ‘Here we go again.’ Then, I was hoping they would find something to give the family closure,” Randy Smith, who was 15 at the time his sister went missing, said Friday.

“My sister was my big sister, very protective and loving,” he recalled. “She really spoiled me. I was the youngest, and I could do no wrong.”

The Smith family, which included Sharon Smith, her parents and five siblings, was in the process of moving to Florida when she disappeared, Randy Smith said.

Their father, Sgt. Harold Leroy Smith, was an Air Force aircraft engineer and was stationed at the Maine Air National Guard in Bangor when he met and married Carolee Smith, who was a Bangor native.


The family’s move may have led some to mistakenly believe the Smiths had abandoned Sharon Smith, Randy Smith said.

“My oldest sister and brother were already down there. Some people said, ‘You took off.’ We didn’t take off, we were moving,” he said. “We had already sold everything. We just figured she would come back. For real.

“Then as years go by, you realize … ,” Randy Smith said, letting his sentence trail off.
A daughter’s search

In addition to her parents and siblings, Sharon Smith left behind two children. Mandi Clark of Bangor was 5 when her mother vanished. Clark said Tuesday that she doesn’t remember Sharon Smith but does remember asking, as a little girl, “How come mom hasn’t come to visit?”

Clark’s brother, Jamie Clark, was a year older. He died at the age of 15. They were both raised by her father, David Clark, who had custody of them before Sharon Smith disappeared and now also is deceased.
Mandi Clark has her own opinions about what happened to her mother, but she does not believe she is alive after all these years.

“In 1995, my friend Wendy and I decided I would try to find my mom,” Clark said, sitting in the living room of her Bangor apartment with a collage of family pictures behind her, one featuring her as a toddler being held by her mother.

Because her mother’s family had moved to Florida and they didn’t really stay in touch, the two friends had little information to start with. They found Sharon Smith’s birth date and Social Security number, which had not been used since 1980, and started talking to anyone with connections to her or the Paramount Lounge.

Stories about what happened the night her mother went missing run the gamut of a jealous boyfriend killing her to gun running, Clark said she discovered.

During her investigation, which is referred to in a recently filed police affidavit, she got a call from an anonymous man who told her Franklin “George” Gilks killed her mother and that “things got carried away, accidents happen.”

Clark said the conversation scared her after the man told her to “leave things alone,” or something similar might happen to her. She reported the call to police.

While she stopped digging around at that point, she never stopped believing her mother would be found.

“I don’t care what happened. I just want her body,” Clark said.

“I just want closure. I just want to bury her here,” she said.

Cold case

The place where Sharon Smith worked, the Paramount Lounge, was located on the ground floor of the hotel built in 1911 on Harlow Street. Sharon Smith, who also went by the names Sharon Clark and Sharon Beaudoin, was renting a room there. The hotel and lounge changed hands and closed about three years after Sharon Smith vanished
Asked what their parents thought about Sharon Smith’s lifestyle, Randy Smith paused.

“They were just happy she had a job,” he recalled. “She was a fun-loving spirit.”

The Paramount is the last place Sharon Smith was seen alive, Bangor police Detective Jeremy Brock, who took over the case last fall, discovered when he reviewed the case file.

Despite the case remaining unsolved for years, law enforcement investigators didn’t forget about Sharon Smith. Her missing person’s case in the 1990s was handled by now retired Detective Ed Thorne, who interviewed several people who pointed the finger at Gilks. He also interviewed a co-worker of Sharon Smith’s who is believed to be one of the last people to see her alive. The co-worker reported that she stopped by and saw Sharon Smith at the Paramount and that Sharon Smith was supposed to come by her apartment afterward but never showed
The case file also contains references to two people who told police that Gilks admitted to killing Sharon Smith while at a drinking party, where he was “quite intoxicated.” They reported that Gilks told them he broke Sharon Smith’s neck during an argument.
An anonymous letter was sent to Bangor police in May 1999, according to an affidavit filed with a search warrant for the Hermon property. The letter, which was postmarked from Ohio, implicates Gilks, Sharon Smith’s “on and off again” boyfriend, as a suspect and states, “you will find the body of Sharon Clark under the living room part of this old ugly home on the right hand side of the road where George Gilks used to live in Hermon.”

Despite the reference to Hermon in the letter, a majority of the other evidence led investigators to where Gilks, who died in 2008, lived at the time Sharon Smith went missing, which was a trailer in Carmel. The Carmel location was mentioned by several others who implicated Gilks in Sharon Smith’s disappearance, the affidavit states.

In 1999, cadaver dogs searched the Carmel property for evidence related to the case but didn’t find a scent. The affidavit doesn’t indicate if the Hermon property was located and searched at that time.

Thorne and another Bangor officer went to Florida shortly after receiving the letter to provide the entire Smith family with an update.
The detectives came down here 20 years ago. They said they knew who did it but they didn’t have enough evidence,” Randy Smith said. “They told us her apartment was left open and her purse was inside.”

When he heard those details, Randy Smith realized his sister was never coming back.

“It just seemed crazy to me,” he said.

Search yields new leads
After taking over the case, Brock found more leads to pursue, according to the affidavit. He and Detective Tim Shaw searched property records and discovered Gilks had indeed lived in Hermon in his youth, and his mother and brother still lived at the location of his childhood home, 147 New Boston Road. The old barn that once served as the family’s home was torn down 20 years ago and replaced by a rain pond with a small fountain made out of concrete surrounded by rocks and a garden.

The detectives met with the Gilks who agreed to allow a cadaver dog to search the property. Deborah Palman, a former Maine Game Warden who is a special deputy for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office, brought her dog, Raven, to the scene on June 14.

“Raven gave a positive indication for the scent of human decomposition at an area near the rain pond where the house used to stand,” the affidavit for the search warrant states. “After probing the ground where the house used to stand, Raven positively indicated several more times in the same area as before.”
The positive indications were enough to convince a judge to allow the June 23 excavation.

Gilks’ family members told police at the time of the search they didn’t believe Gilks had anything to do with Sharon Smith’s disappearance.

The June search for evidence related to Sharon Smith’s case resulted in no evidence being seized, the affidavit filed by Brock at the Penobscot Judicial Center states.

While no items were seized, new leads are now being followed, Sgt. David Bushey, who leads the detective’s division, said Thursday.

“People are starting to call again,” Bushey said. “We don’t have any good solid leads, but we’re creating a list of people to do follow up interviews with. We’ve had a couple people reach out by email as well.”
The family heard about the Hermon excavation after Maine relatives called to let them know it was happening, said Randy Smith and his brother Larry Smith of Tallahassee, Florida, who is more than a decade older than his missing sister.

Larry Smith said his sister loved music and was “kinda crazy.” He also believes she is dead and added that while a part of him wants to know what happened, another part just wants closure.

“I thought it all went away,” Larry Smith said by phone.

For Sharon Smith’s daughter and two grandsons, Micheal and Caleb, there will be no closure until she is found.

“I just want her to know, I’m still here,” Mandi Clark said. “So she’ll know nobody forgot about her.”https://bangordailynews.com/2016/07/16/news...?ref=relatedBox
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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Begood
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https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/show/36952
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