It was in his bedroom,

after dinner on Friday night, December 16, 1983,

and Michael Groton was in his bedroom, plucking his guitar with a friend,

repeating the riffs he'd been working on, and hanging out with his

pal, just typical 16-year-old stuff. Michael's mother Norma Groton was in the kitchen, on the phone with

his sister Rosaline. It was a routine Friday evening, just waiting for

Mervyn Sunny Groton to get home. 46 year old Sunny Groton, as he was known, was a machinist-mate chief petty officer in the US Navy with 26 years of service.

Though his wife Norma, his son Michael, and his daughters Rosalin and Nina all lived in Maine,

he commuted to his job training new officers on shipboard equipment at the Naval Education

Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island each week.

On Fridays, he made the four and a half hour drive back to Maine, pulled into the driveway, hopped out of his truck,

sundered quietly up the walkway, and stepped through the front

door of his home on White Street in Belfast to greet his family.

But on December 16, 1983, Sunny Groton didn't make it through the front door.

He pulled into the driveway and hopped out of his truck and began his quiet saunter up the walkway. And then three loud pops

three loud pops rang out over the guitar strumming in Michael's bedroom.

They pierced the sound of Norma's phone call in the kitchen.

Roslin asked her mother on the other end of the line,

is something wrong with the truck, backfiring or something like that?

As Michael and his friend ran to the living room window to determine the source of the sounds,

Norma Groton said dryly into the phone, I gotta go.

Researching this case as I was sitting on the couch across from my husband, I kept repeating to him I cannot believe this case happened in Maine, as if Vacation Land is somehow immune to conniving selfish evil masterminds devoid of feeling and remorse

...