September 24th, 1971 was the last day at the time 16-year-old Kathy Marie Malton was seen.

Kathy planned to attend a dance during that night in her hometown of Portland, Maine.

She asked her father to drop her off on Cumberland Avenue

that evening. Kathy wanted to purchase a pair of panty hose and some toothpaste before preparing

for the dance. She stopped by a music store on Forest Avenue later in the day to visit a friend.

She told her friend she would see her at the dance that evening and then said she was going to

walk home, which was about a mile and a half away.

She was last seen walking down Forest Avenue after leaving the music store, and she was

seen carrying a brown leather Mexican clutch purse, which contained her house key, two tubes

of toothpaste, and a very small amount of cash.

When she didn't arrive home by dinner time, her parents knew

something was wrong and reported her missing. Kathy was seen in a stolen blue Cadillac with her

friend named Lester Everett, though it is possible that Kathy willingly left with him. There were

reported sightings of Kathy, Lester, and another young man in a remote area of Arustook County a few weeks after

her disappearance. The second young man was Ronald Reed Purley. However, Lester was eventually

found alone and he claimed to not know where Kathy was. A garage employee at Fort Fairfield

in Arustook County remembered seeing Kathy, Lester, and Ronald. They came to the garage to buy new tires for the Cadillac.

The employees said Ronald appeared to be controlling Kathy's movements,

even walking her to and from the bathroom with his hand on the back of her neck.

Across the border on the Tobeak Reserve, witnesses said they saw Lester and Kathy for a few days

in September 1971, before the two

went to a farm in the Mars Hill area of Arrustook County where they started working on a potato

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