Unsolved Homicide in Newport, Maine: Robert McKee

Dark Downeast

audiochuck

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It was just before 4 a.m. on June 20, 1975 in Newport, Maine. The sky was just warming with hints of dawn and the air was quiet save for the buzz of the ice cooler and Coca Cola vending machine sitting in the dim glow of the gas station lights. The fishermen waiting in their car for gasoline noticed a light on inside McNally’s Texaco, but no one came to greet them outside at the pump. Anxious to get their day started, the driver stepped out of the car to see what was the hold up.

As he opened the door to the station, the unsuspecting fisherman found 35-year old Robert McKee lying on the floor in a pool of blood. His murder remains unsolved to this day.

If you have information regarding this case, please contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit - North at (207) 973-3750 or toll free 1-800-432-7381. You may also report information about this crime using the leave a tip form.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I spend a lot of time reviewing the details of Maine's unsolved homicide list, scrolling
0:09.3	the names and seeing the faces of those whose cases still wait for their conclusion.
0:15.5	They're all familiar to me at this point, I know they're photos by heart, and even
0:19.6	the years and dates stick with me now, but I notice something new each time I check
0:24.8	that list too.
0:27.1	Newport Maine, 1975, two names, two unsolved homicides.
0:34.7	I'd never picked up on it before, the cases of Robert McKee and Ellen Chote are not linked,
0:41.4	at least not confirmed to be linked despite speculation, but they're connected by time
0:46.8	and place, the same month and year in the same small Maine town.
0:53.7	In the next two episodes of Dark Down East, you'll hear what happened that June of 1975,
1:00.7	and about the two humans lost to still unsolved violent crimes.
1:06.8	I'm Kylie Lo and this is the case of Robert McKee on Dark Down East.
1:23.7	He was a sixth grade teacher at the Vickery School in Pittsfield, but when the kiddos
1:35.8	were out on summer vacation and his classroom was closed up until the fall, 35-year-old Robert
1:41.7	McKee picked up a full-time summer gig at McNally's Texaco station in Newport.
1:47.9	He met his wife while stationed in Germany as first lieutenant for the US Army in 1966
1:53.7	to 1968, and that extra cash from his service station attendant job meant he could afford
2:00.2	to send his wife back to Germany to visit her family.
2:04.9	Robert McKee, by all accounts, was a family man.
2:08.9	He had two children, a young son and a daughter.
2:12.5	Mike McNally, owner of the gas station where Robert worked, told Bruce Hertz of the Mangor
2:17.3	Daily News that, Robert was the kind of person you would like to have as a father or a son.
	...

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