Update From Augusta

 MAINE – Looking back on the year, there were not as many “unsolved” as there were “unresolved” cases.

“Unresolved” cases are not necessarily mysteries to the police or district attorneys, but for various reasons, the who, what, and why of a crime are withheld from the public.

Sometimes, these drift into oblivion, and other times they suddenly reappear with little forewarning.

Deadly crashes

The October 21 death of 18-year-old Thomas McLendon, of Oxford, has remained another mystery to the public. The young man was riding in a car with three other late adolescents when the car in which he was a passenger went off Route 35, in Harrison, near the Waterford Town Line. Because the driver was a juvenile, her identity and the results of a state police accident reconstruction have not been released.  

Another fatal crash took place August 29, in which Nicholas Sparrow, 20, of Casco, refused to stop for a police officer and crashed his car on Route 11, near the Leach Hill intersection, killing Thomas St. Saviour, 29, of Hiram, and Michael Daye, 14, of Baldwin. Sparrow is awaiting trial on charges of manslaughter, driving under the influence and eluding a police officer. There are indications that a separate criminal investigation is connected to the accident reconstruction, furnishing another reason for the district attorney's reticence.

In neither the Casco, nor the Harrison crashes has anyone been charged with providing liquor to minors.

Robberies

Two robberies were foiled by stubborn cashiers who refused to deal with the would-be robbers.

In Naples, May 10, a man walked into the Rite Aid drugstore and demanded Oxycontin. The druggist refused and the thief turned on his heel and left. He was never apprehended.

On August 5, a man entered the Oxford Irving convenience store and demanded money. He held his hand in his pocket, as if he had a gun. The gutsy clerk told him to show her the gun and with that exchange of words, he left. Like the Naples tyro, he, too, was never caught, although Oxford police say they have a suspect.

Some cases are put under wraps by the district attorney or the state attorney general.

On July 10, Linda Foster, 61, of Oxford, was killed in Mechanic Falls, when her car and another collided. At first, it was believed that the other vehicle was stationary, however the physics seemed to indicate the vehicle could not have been where it was said to be.

Another arson, on Harris Hill, in Poland, July 27, took place during what appeared to be a home invasion.  The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Department and the Maine Fire Marshal's investigators say they have no suspects, although the joint investigation remains open.

From last year, the case of Gene Reynolds, 42, is still unresolved, at least as far as the public is concerned. His corpse was found outside his new home on Birch Lane, a private road in Hebron, on April 18, 2009. Oxford County Sheriff's deputies and state troopers responding to a 911 emergency call that a domestic dispute that was taking place, but no mention had been made of a death.

The woman who called 911 shared the house with Reynolds, which they had moved into only a month before. It was not disclosed by the police where they had moved from or where either of them worked. Their neighbors claimed not to have met either of them, yet.

Once Reynold's body was found, the deputies turned the case over to the troopers, and they, in turn, called in their detective force. That was a routine procedure in the case of a death under unusual circumstances. Finding a dead body in front of a house where a domestic dispute had allegedly just taken place qualified as “unusual.”

From that point on, a curtain appears to have been drawn around the incident. The chief state police detective for the region at that time said, in May, that the investigation was “basically complete.” However, he could not comment further because it had been turned over the the Maine Attorney General (MAG) to decide if anyone would be prosecuted. The medical examiner's office, which performed an autopsy, also refused to disclose the cause of death, at the direction of the MAG.