My dad didn't deserve his death and he doesn't deserve first case to go unsolved. He was a good person.

I mean, I wanted him to be able to be at peace. Help us put him to rest.

Jessica Zernicke Holmes left work on the night of September 24th, 2015 to find her phone flooded with missed calls and messages.

When she was finally able to call her family member back, they delivered shocking news about her father.

58-year-old Kenneth Zernicke was found dead inside his burning home in Caribou, Maine.

Two days later, his death was ruled a homicide.

Just reached out to me because after nearly seven years, her father's case remains unsolved, with little public information available, even to family members.

She wrote in that first email, I understand it makes it hard to cover a case with little to no information.

But I am hoping to get this out there as much and as often as possible. I miss my dad.

That is why I started this show. No matter the amount of public information on a case, these stories need and deserve attention.

I'm Kylie Lowe and here is Jess Zernicke Holmes to tell the story of her father, Kenneth Zernicke, on Dark Down East.

Kenneth Zernicke was born at Lorring Air Force Base in limestone, Maine, on the ancestral land of the Mick Mack Nation.

Lorring is no longer an active base. It closed down in 1994 and was later redeveloped as an industrial and aviation park.

If you know Aristot County though, you undoubtedly know the Lorring Base, whether it be from family members or friends who lived and worked there, or have visited since its redevelopment, or maybe you've heard about the reported UFO sightings near the base in the mid-1970s.

Either way, it's part of the history of the area.

Kenneth grew up in nearby Caribou, about 10 miles from the base. He was there his entire life and bought a house in the central part of town in 1989.

Aristot County is largely untouched forest land and wilderness. There's a lot of nature to experience and appreciate up there.

And Kenneth was a county guy through and through. He was big on hunting and had several different kinds of bows, and he was also a skilled angler who made his own fishing lures.

Kenneth was Mick Mack and an elder of the tribe. Just told me that while he didn't tend to participate in big events, his Mick Mack heritage was important to him and something he taught to his daughter, including the things they weren't teaching just in the past.

He weren't teaching just in school.

His whole house was plastered and Mick Mack stuff, and he made sure that it was a part of my upbringing as well.

He focused a lot on the beginning stages of the history with Indigenous people. He taught it to me as a genocide of our people, which was taught in school.

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