Cathy Moulton's Final Walk Home

"Bangor Daily News," October 6, 2005, via Newspapers.com

Cathy Marie Moulton was a typical early 1970s American middle-class teen.  By all accounts, she was a nice, well-behaved girl with no serious problems in her life.  Born in Portland, Maine, in 1955, she and her two sisters had a quiet, comfortable suburban childhood.  Those who knew Cathy described her as intelligent, quiet, and contemplative.  Although Cathy had few close friends, she was universally liked.  She wrote poetry, worked as a babysitter, attended local dances, and--entirely on her own initiative--did what she could to assist neighbors who were ill or otherwise in trouble.  Her mother, Claire Moulton, once commented, “She felt if you were nice to other people they would be nice to you.”

The summer of 1971 was the most exciting of Cathy’s young life.  Her father, Lyman Moulton, took time off from his business of selling used cars to take the family on a long road trip through the U.S. and Mexico.  When Cathy returned in the fall to her high school, friends noted that she was still visibly elated over her little adventure.  She proudly showed off a distinctive leather handbag that her parents had bought her in Mexico for her 16th birthday present.

On Friday, September 24, 1971, Cathy came home from school and asked her father to give her a ride into town so she could do a bit of shopping.  She had a run in her pantyhose, and wanted to get a new pair to wear to a YMCA dance she was attending that evening.  Her mother gave her a few dollars, asking her to buy some toothpaste.  Mrs. Moulton also gave her some coins for the bus ride home.

Cathy’s father dropped her off at about 1:15 pm, and watched her walk up the street towards the shops.  Two hours later, Cathy ran into a classmate, Carol Starbird.  Cathy told Carol that she was heading home to get ready for the dance.  She added that since she had spent her bus fare, she’d have to walk the two miles home.  She then went on her way, with Carol never dreaming that she would be the last known person to see Cathy Moulton, alive or dead.

When Cathy failed to arrive home for dinner, her mother instantly became concerned.  The Moultons always notified each other when they were running late, and Cathy had never gone anywhere without telling her parents first.  At 6:30 p.m, Claire called the police saying she wanted to file a missing persons report.  “They laughed at me,” she later bitterly.  She was told that she would have to wait 72 hours before police could do anything.

After checking with friends and doing a search of local hospitals, Lyman went to the police station, where he raised such a fuss that just to get rid of him, officers finally allowed him to file the report.

It did little good.  Although one would think the inexplicable disappearance of a girl of Cathy’s known reliability would have attracted attention, the local media gave the mystery scant coverage.  And, of course, there was no internet to spread the word about the missing teen.  The Moultons contacted the FBI, only to be told that without any evidence that their daughter was kidnapped, the Bureau could do nothing.  And the Portland police made it clear that they believed Cathy was a mere runaway.  Her family came to realize that no one was going to help them in their search for her.  Sixteen years later, Lyman Moulton told writer Grantland S. Rice, “I don’t agree with the way they [the police] handled things, but I understand they weren’t picking on us.  This was a whole new ball game for us.  We’d had no real problems to think about.  Then something like this happens.  You don’t know what to do.”

The Moultons remained in this state of helpless despair.  Then, in November, officials at Cathy’s high school cleaned out her locker.  They found a phone number scribbled on a scrap of paper.  This briefly raised her family’s hopes that finally, some clue had been found about her disappearance.    Unfortunately, it turned out to be for one of the phones at Lyman’s used car lot.  Mrs. Moulton spent most of her time sitting by an upstairs window, vainly waiting to see her daughter, walking home.

A few possible clues began to trickle in.  One person recalled giving a lift to a boy and a girl with an unusual looking purse.  Another claimed to have seen a teenager fitting Cathy’s description hitchhiking on Route 88.  Another remembered seeing a girl with long hair and glasses getting into a Pontiac driven by a young man.  Yet another had a story of seeing her with two older men.  Were any of these girls really Cathy?  No one could say.  The mother of one of Cathy’s classmates told police that the gossip around her school was that Cathy had gone to Boston.  Shortly before Cathy disappeared, a girl in her study hall had talked about all the fun she had during a visit to the city.  Cathy “appeared interested.”

Out of desperation, Lyman Moulton consulted a psychic named Alex Tanous.  “I’m not saying I do or don’t believe,” Moulton explained, “but you’ve got to try these things.”  One evening, they drove around what they believed would have been Cathy’s route home.  At the corner of Forest and Park Street, Tanous felt “a sense” that Cathy got into a car.  He felt that the car then turned left and headed south, in the direction of Boston.  At that point, Tanous lost the “vibrations.”

In late November 1971, the Moultons were told by the State Police that a girl who looked like Cathy was living in Presque Isle.  Her parents immediately drove there, to discover that the local sheriff’s department knew nothing about Cathy’s disappearance, or the girl allegedly living in their area.  Lyman Moulton--by now extremely frustrated and extremely angry--handed out Cathy’s photo to the area’s police and sheriff’s departments.  He went door to door handing out flyers and asking if anyone had seen a girl resembling his daughter.  Unfortunately for the Moultons, the girl turned out to be a runaway from Connecticut.  She returned home.  And the Moultons were still left without any trace of their daughter.

There were reports that Cathy left with a friend, Lester Everett, and that a few weeks after she vanished, they were seen working at a potato farm in Aroostook County, about 300 miles from Portland.  Witnesses claimed to have heard the girl saying that she wanted to go home but was worried about facing her family.  However, this proved to be yet another dead-end lead.  When police traced Everett, he was alone and insisted he knew nothing about Cathy’s disappearance.  No one could prove otherwise.

In 1983, a man hunting in the woods of Smyrna, Maine, discovered skeletal remains with what appeared to be female clothing.  Unfortunately, after contacting authorities, he was unable to retrace his steps, and even though cadaver dogs were brought in to search the area, the remains were never found.

Sixteen years after Cathy vanished, a Portland police detective commented, “Maybe she’s living happily ever after somewhere in Canada.  That’s where everyone was going in the early Seventies.  Or maybe she’s buried in a grave somewhere in Maine or Massachusetts...or a skeleton in a morgue.  That’s the sad thing.  We just don’t know.”  In 2008, 83-year old Lyman Moulton told a “Boston Globe” reporter, “One of my greatest--greatest--greatest sadnesses is that I may die...and never know what happened to Cathy.  And yet I’m helpless to change it.”  His fears came true when he died in 2017 with his daughter’s fate as mysterious as ever.

This is one of those missing-persons cases which might one day be solved.  If Cathy Moulton is still alive--something which seems unlikely, but not impossible--she would be only in her mid-60s, and could, conceivably, come forward to explain what happened to her so many years ago.  If she is long dead, the wonders of DNA testing might one day match some unidentified remains of a teenage girl, and Cathy’s surviving family members could see her, at long last, come home.