The Murder of Judith Flagg (Maine) 26:30

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January 6th, 1983 was a cold Thursday in the small town of Fayette, Maine. It was just a few days into the new year and Maine's temperatures hovered below freezing. The 800 residents of the town were slowly beginning their recovery from holiday festivities with friends and family across Maine and beyond and settling back into their work schedules after some deserved time off.

That evening, Ted Flagg was returning home to his wife, Judith Flagg, and their one-year-old son. He had worked a double shift, a long 16 hours, at one of the mills in the area. Today, most of these mills are closed. But driving by the river that used to power the cogs of huge machines, you can still see the bones of the sites remaining. Working long hours at the mill was part of Ted Flagg's typical routine, and he looked forward to coming home to his family each night.

But when he returned home on that cold day in January 1983, Ted was not warmly greeted by his wife as usual. Instead, he found 23-year-old Judith dead, murdered. Evidence was scattered around the house, boot prints in the freshly fallen snow. Suspicion was cast and stories perpetuated throughout the small town of Fayette. But it would take over two decades to bring this cold case to a close.

I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Judith Flagg on Dark Down East. Judith L. Flagg, better known as Judy, was born near Fayette, Maine in January of 1960. In the winter of 1983, she had just turned 23 years old. Judy spent her childhood, formative years, and all of her young adult life in the area of Fayette, about a half an hour drive west of Augusta, Maine's capital city.

During her teenage years, Judy had attended the local high school, Jay High School, and had successfully graduated in 1978. According to Judy's high school yearbook, she was very involved in her high school community. She participated in multiple clubs and athletic groups during her time in high school, including the field hockey team, the ski team, and the cheer team. In her yearbook, she shared that she hoped to work in the data processing field in the future.

In 1979, just over a year after graduating from Jay High School, Judy married a young man named Theodore Flagg, better known as Ted. He was also from the Fayette area and had grown up in the neighboring town of Livermore Falls. Judy and Ted met and fell in love while still teenagers.

After getting married, the two had a son together and purchased a small home from the local Mitchell family. They settled into the converted blue farmhouse in a quiet wooded area and began to make a home and a life together in the small town of Fayette. Ted spent his days working at a paper mill in the area while Judy stayed home with the baby.

The two felt comfortable staying there in Fayette, near their families. Judy was close with her mother and father, Pauline and Alex, as well as her sister Doreen and her brother David. Although she had moved out of her parents' house and begun a family of her own, Judy made sure to talk to and visit her family often.

Not only did they feel safe with their family nearby, this small town was and still is the kind of place where everyone knew one another. People felt safe and secure in their homes knowing that Fayette was the type of town where crime was a rarity and citizens of the area never even locked their doors.

The mills and homes of town residents are nestled in the rolling hills of farms in the rural landscape of central Maine, surrounded by cows grazing in fields, forests that are home to summer camps and cabins, and acres of apple orchards.

To this day, residents of the Fayette area work primarily at local convenience stores and grocery stores, elementary and high schools, or in agricultural pursuits. Many of the roads to the houses are one lane or only partially paved. Although the majority of the town's mills have closed, the memories of the buildings still remain, influencing the culture of the town to this day.

In 1983, however, the manufacturing pursuits of the Fayette and Livermore Falls mills were alive and well.

According to a 1983 piece in the Bangor Daily News, employment at the mills was an extremely common occupation for the men of the area. A significant number of men in Fayette were employed at the paper mills and often worked night shifts, leaving their wives and children safe in their homes while they worked, as was routine for Judy's husband Ted.

On the last day of Judy's life, Ted had a double shift, spending more than 16 hours away from home. That morning, he said goodbye to his wife and son, believing that he would be coming home to them that evening. Ted didn't know that he was kissing his wife goodbye for the last time.

After Ted left for work, the timeline is slightly hazy. However, it is believed that Judy spent her morning cleaning and doing various chores around their house. She had spent the last 13 months staying at home with their son, making sure that everything was taken care of at home. According to case records and a 2009 piece by Ben Hanstein in the Daily Bulldog,

Judy also enjoyed spending time talking to her family. On the morning of January 6th, 1983, Judy spent a significant portion of the morning on the phone, beginning around 10:30 a.m. She caught up with her sister, her brother, and other family members.

Years later, Maine Deputy Attorney General William Stokes told the Daily Bulldog writer Ben Hanstein that Judy told her sister someone called the house asking for her husband that day, a man claiming to be a friend of Ted's. Judy told the caller that Ted wouldn't be home until later in the evening. Judy ended the phone call with her sister saying, "'Someone's here.'"

When Judith's sister tried to call the house again later, she couldn't get through. The line was busy. According to case records, Judy's brother David shared a similar story. He said Judy called him around 10:45 that morning. She wanted to let him know that an unidentified man, claiming to be a friend of Ted's, was at the house. He had come to the door with car trouble, requesting assistance from Judy.

When she called David, he offered to come to the house to help the man with his car. However, the "friend" declined the offer. He reassured Judy and her brother that he would be able to go into town to find help. This was the last time that Judith Flagg spoke with her loved ones. Though her siblings David and Doreen were the last ones to speak with Judy, they were not the last family members to visit the Flagg property.

On the afternoon of the same day, around 2:00 p.m., Judy's brother-in-law stopped by the house. He had been planning to help Ted with a repair for the family's truck. However, he recalls that during his time on the property, he was somewhat surprised that he didn't see Judy. Nevertheless, he assumed that she was likely busy with the baby or taking some needed time to rest. He didn't try to pursue it further or look for her.

If he had gone into the house, the Flagg family would have known that something was amiss much earlier in the day. But it took over 16 hours from the time that Ted had kissed his wife goodbye that morning for anyone to know that Judy was no longer alive. Around 11pm on the evening of January 6th, Ted finally returned home from work. When he opened the door, he found his wife on the kitchen floor.

She was holding the corded kitchen phone in one hand. Ted saw their 13-month-old son awake and laying nearby his mother. Both of them were covered in blood, but the baby was not physically harmed.

Judy, however, had been severely assaulted. She had cuts, bruises, and other wounds across her arms, hands, and torso. Barely 23 years into her life, Judith Flagg, a daughter, sister, wife, and mother, had been stabbed to death. Theodore Flagg must have been in shock at the sight of his wife in such a state. But nevertheless, he was able to take action.

According to case records, he immediately picked up his son from the floor. Ted took him downstairs to the basement of the house and reached out to his relatives. Once family arrived, records state that he had one of them call the authorities. The police soon arrived and immediately began their investigation into the death of Judith Flagg.

Upon their arrival, police looked over the entire house and began taking photographs. Records indicate that they took pictures of everywhere they found blood, including the baby's room, the hallway, and the kitchen. They also collected clippings from Judy's fingernails, samples of blood found around the house, and swabs of other bodily fluids. The weather was typical of Maine in early January, and it had snowed earlier that day.

The driveway was icy and slippery, but the snow around the house collected a record of everything that touched it. Anyone who had been nearby had left footprints. Police were able to locate prints all around the house, leading from the kitchen door to the road, and they took photographs to make casts of them. But missing among the initial evidence was a murder weapon.

In the weeks following Judy's murder, police went to work to solve the case. They developed a five-person task force and spent their time interviewing hundreds of Fayette residents to take their statements. According to a 1983 article in the Bangor Daily News, the unit set up a command post at a firehouse just outside of town and operated their investigation from there.

Everyone who knew Judy shared that she had no enemies, and it was difficult for them to identify any obvious motive. Though the Bangor Daily News reported that the police unit conducted between 150 and 200 interviews, very few citizens of the town had witnessed anything unusual during the day of January 6th. One exception, though, was the neighborhood mail carrier. When questioned, she remembered that she had seen something a little odd.

She recalled that around noon on that day, she had been on her usual route delivering mail, and around that time she was heading towards the Flagg's house. The winter snowstorm had made the roads slippery, and the mail carrier remembered a close call with another vehicle driving recklessly. She was almost run off the road.

According to case documents, the mail carrier witnessed a car come over the hill and swerve off the road into a ditch and then back onto the road, nearly hitting the mail carrier. The driver was able to get back onto the road and zip by. The mail carrier remembered that the car was maroon with a tan top, driven by a clean-shaven male, possibly in his 20s, with light brown hair.

The witness got a close enough look to report that the driver was wearing a tan coat and gray wool scarf. The driver did not make eye contact with her as he passed. With the available evidence obtained from the scene, minimal relevant testimony, and no clear motive, investigators tried to develop their theories.

The lack of motive meant that they had a wide range of suspects from around Fayette and neighboring towns. However, they believed they were looking for a man with a two-toned car that had been around the flag house on that day, and the mail carrier's recollection provided some sort of description of the man in question. They also were able to compare a suspect's shoes with the footprints found in the snow.

With that, a person of interest emerged: 25-year-old Thomas H. Mitchell Jr. Thomas Mitchell was also from the Fayette area. He was just a couple of years older than Judy and Ted and was the son of the previous owner of the home that was then owned by the flag couple. Ted recalled that after purchasing the home, Mitchell had come by the house a few times. He expressed interest in picking up personal belongings.

When he found Ted to be unhelpful, he wasn't happy. For Ted, the interactions raised suspicion. Since Judy's death, the Flagg family had a strong belief that they knew what happened and who was responsible. Despite this, for the police investigation, there were no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence leading back to Mitchell. Therefore, no official action could be taken.

The investigation into the murder of Judy Flagg went cold in 1983 and remained as such for 23 years. Those 23 years passed quietly. The family continued to mourn their loss and did their best to move forward. In early September of 2006, the investigation finally took a turn.

The evidence painstakingly collected by the police in that early January evening of 1983, including photographs, the casts of the boot prints in the snow, the blood samples, and the fingernail clippings, turned out to be crucial information. Scientific discoveries and the advent of DNA testing gave hope to the Flagg family that they may finally have answers.

Developmental advances in DNA testing and technology had been available for some time, but did not become widely used until the late 1990s and early 2000s. The ability to analyze, test, and compare DNA arrived at the Maine State Crime Lab in 1996. With this new opportunity came new investigative avenues, especially for cold cases.

According to court documents, Alicia Wilcox, forensic chemist at the State Crime Lab, was interested in examining Judy's case in 2003. By 2005, she had already begun compiling and taking inventory of all the evidence available in the case. She examined casts from the shoe imprints left in the snow and analyzed the fingernail clippings taken from Judy's hands.

In 2006, Alicia began creating DNA profiles based on the evidence found in Judy's fingernail clippings from the day of her death. These profiles matched only one person besides Judith Flagg herself, a man who had long been in the crosshairs of the investigation. The DNA evidence matched that of Thomas Mitchell Jr.,

When the DNA match came back, Mitchell was 49 years old and was already serving time in prison for the unrelated assault of a young woman. It was thanks to that arrest that the state of Maine had his DNA profile in their records. However, at the time of Alicia Wilcox's discovery, Mitchell was only months away from being released.

With this new evidence in hand and the knowledge that Mitchell could soon be out of prison, officers moved to indict Thomas Mitchell for the murder of Judith Flagg in January of 2007. It had been 24 years since Judy had been murdered. Finally, her family was close to having answers.

Judy and Ted Flagg did know Thomas Mitchell, though prior to January of 1983, Ted had been the only one to interact with him. The Flags had purchased their home from the estate of Mitchell's father in 1980. Thomas Mitchell Jr. was not happy about this development. Thomas Mitchell Sr. had passed away and left his estate to his wife, the stepmother to Thomas Mitchell Jr., who then sold it to the Flags.

In 1983, Mitchell Jr. was frustrated about the loss of the property he felt should be his. After Ted and Judy moved into their new home, Thomas Mitchell Jr. began stopping by the house to pick up personal belongings. Court records indicate that the first time, Ted and Judy weren't home. Mitchell was frustrated that he had driven there for nothing and left a note expressing his anger.

In response, Ted brought the possessions in question to the realtor. When Mitchell came to the house again, Ted and Judy opened the door to inform him that his possessions were with the real estate office. Mitchell was still not satisfied, and records say that his face appeared distorted and unhappy. Police and prosecutors believe that on January 6th, 1983, Mitchell once again returned to the home.

The case against Thomas H. Mitchell Jr. took three years to go to trial and had several delays, including motions to move the case to another county in order to avoid bias. When the trial occurred in a packed courtroom in neighboring Franklin County in 2009, he pleaded not guilty.

According to the prosecution, the theory follows that on the day of Judy's death, Mitchell returned to the home to inquire once again about his property. In doing so, he initiated a confrontation that would end Judy Flagg's life. The prosecution used the DNA match as their strongest evidence of Mitchell's guilt. However, they also pointed to his shoes.

When Mitchell was first a suspect in 1984, police had visited his home and confiscated his boots, which matched the tread of the prints left in the snow on the day of Judy's murder. Prosecution also pointed to the mail carrier's eyewitness statements placing a young man of Mitchell's description in the area on that day.

The mail carrier had recalled seeing a two-toned car. In 1983, Mitchell drove a two-toned Thunderbird. Mitchell's defense team challenged the charge against their client, saying that he was a resident of South Portland at the time and he claimed to have been there with family members on the day of the murder. They also argued that the evidence against him was just circumstantial.

The defense also employed an alternate suspect defense, sowing reasonable doubt within the jury. Doerr and Strong suggested a neighbor of Ted and Judy Flagg may have been responsible, citing that the neighbor matched a similar description and wore similar shoes and drove a similar car.

According to a 2009 article in the Bangor Daily News, the jury deliberated for just an hour and a half before returning a verdict. Thomas Mitchell Jr., guilty of the murder of Judith Flagg. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Over the last 12 years, Mitchell and his lawyers have attempted to appeal repeatedly, most recently in 2019.

They have cited alleged errors in DNA analysis, claiming that the samples had been contaminated. However, the lab ran another analysis, returning the same result.

Daily Bulldog reporter Ben Hanstein summarized the Attorney General's explanation of the DNA analysis. Quote, For the lab to make a meaningful finding, the random match probability, or chance that a random person could have left a sample, would have to be 300 billion to 1. However, in this case, the random match probability was estimated at 69 quadrillion to 1.

"A billion is a thousand million. A quadrillion, in its most common usage, means a thousand million million." Thomas Mitchell Jr. remains in prison to this day. January 6th, 1983 was just three days after the 23rd birthday of Judith Flagg. Her life was cut far too short.

Fayette, Maine, a town of 800 people, a tight-knit community where no one was afraid of their neighbor. No one thought twice about assisting a stranger with a car trouble or about leaving their door unlocked. But after Judy's death, they were in shock. It was the place where this didn't happen.

Even in the town's annual report, it's clear how unusual homicide was or violent crime of any kind. According to the Bangor Daily News, records show that this was the first murder known in the 188-year history of the town. Residents shared with the news that after Judy's death, they began locking their doors at night.

One woman shared that she was afraid to walk between her car and her workplace early in the morning, especially when no one else was around. The murder of Judy Flagg completely rattles the town.

Yet despite the shock and fear inspired by Judy's death, the community did not close off. In the January 13th, 1983 Bangor Daily News, community members shared that they leaned on one another during the difficult time. They created donation jars for the Flag family at both general stores in town, supporting each other in any way that they were able.

Judy's family never completely healed, but they did their best to move onward and live their lives after they lost Judy. Theodore Flagg eventually remarried. In 2006, the Sun Journal shared that their son grew up to be a successful adult despite never knowing his mother. He was an honor student at Livermore High School and became a physical therapist in southern Maine.

Throughout it all, Judy's son remained close with his mother's side of the family, including his aunt, uncle, and grandmother. When Mitchell was indicted in 2006, Judy's brother, David Dion, shared with The Sun-Journal, "We're all just looking for closure." That is the wish for so many families who have lost their loved ones to violent crime in Maine and New England.

Over the last few years, we've seen more and more cold cases being solved years after the fact thanks to DNA evidence. Judy's story is one of an increasing number and proves the importance of maintaining evidence and records long after a case has apparently gone cold. Thanks to the dedication of her family, the memory of the community, and the hard work of the Maine State Evidence Lab, answers could be found for Judy.

Though the wounds will never heal, hopefully closure is closer for every person still waiting for a break in their cold case. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. This episode was researched and written by Natalie Jones with additional writing, production, and editing by me, Kylie Lowe.

Sources for this episode include reporting by Lindsay Tice for The Sun Journal, Ben Hanstein for The Daily Bulldog, original court documents, and more. All sources cited and referenced are listed and linked at darkdowneast.com so you can do some digging of your own.

Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and homicide cases. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.