Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Dark Down East is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. The unexpected can happen at any moment, and Amica knows how important it is to be prepared. Whether it's auto, home, or life insurance, Amica has you covered. Their dedicated and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to make sure you have the right coverage in place to protect what matters most. You can feel confident that Amica is there for you. Visit amica.com to get started.
Thomas Napier did not have an easy life. His childhood years were plagued with pain and trauma, and then as a teenager, his choices landed him in trouble with the law. But by the time he turned 22 years old, Thomas was on a better path. He had a job, a stable home life, and a new car he loved. Things were looking up.
Sadly, the progress Thomas was making in his life would never reach its full potential. One weekend in October of 1994 changed everything, and his family still asks the same questions all these years later: Who killed Thomas Napier? I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the disappearance and death of Thomas Napier on Dark Down East.
Thomas and his younger sister Melissa entered the foster care system when he was just 6 years old. They bounced around foster homes and experienced a great deal of uncertainty and instability until Thomas and Melissa were finally adopted together. However,
For reasons unknown, that adoption did not last for Thomas. It was Christmas Day when he and his sister were separated. She remained with that first adoptive family without Thomas. A 1995 piece by Jill Higgins in the Portland Press-Herald shares the story of Thomas' tumultuous childhood being passed from foster family to foster family close to a dozen different homes.
One summer, the family he was living with dropped him off at summer camp. He never saw them again. The trauma developed into trust issues and moody behavior. For four years, Thomas did not know or experience a stable, consistent home. When Thomas was 10 years old, he was adopted for a second time. This one was for forever.
His parents, Kathy and Jim Napier, showed Thomas the love he deserved. Kathy told the Portland Press-Herald in 1995, "Sometimes we'd have to hold him, physically hold him. It was hard to get him to trust, even though he knew we loved him." Thomas attended school in Wells and then Massabesick for junior and senior high.
He learned how to cook at a local restaurant and got a job at the Lucky Lager in Saco. He picked up a sketch pad and began drawing and writing. His art became an outlet to process the challenges of his life. He journaled his thoughts and processed his trauma with ink on paper. After high school, Thomas had several part-time jobs, but eventually started working for a paving company.
His grandparents, Irene and Mike Baker, told Bangor Daily News reporter Eric Wickland that the job put him in with a rough crowd. Trouble seemed to find Thomas, and in 1991, he was arrested on an assault charge in Millinock at Maine. He was 19 years old when he was sentenced to three years in jail, all but 90 days suspended, and three years probation.
Thomas' time in jail was transformational. And when he got out, he was ready to turn things around. Thomas joined the Assembly of God Church, he got a new job, and he started living with his grandparents in Lyman, Maine, a small rural town just west of Portland. The Bancorp Daily News reported that, by 1993, Thomas was really on a path of improvement.
He bought a 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass that became his prized possession, along with the upgraded stereo system he installed. He was social, going out dancing or roller skating with a new group of friends. Previously depressed about the prospects of his future, Thomas seemed optimistic about all the possibilities that lay ahead of him. Thomas cared about his appearance and was particular about his clothing and hair.
The photos I've seen of Thomas show a smirked smile, topped with a groomed mustache, a collared shirt with a gold chain peeking out, and an earring in one ear. Totally on-trend for the early 90s era. On the evening of October 29th, 1993, Thomas was getting ready for a night out. It was Friday of Halloween weekend and, although he wasn't planning to wear a costume, he did have a brand new outfit.
He wrapped up his workday at Cryo Industries in Sanford and headed back to his grandparents' house in Lyman to get ready. His grandparents remembered him showing off his new threads before leaving their house that night. He also gave his grandmother a gift: two small porcelain ducks. Irene told the Bangor Daily News that it was probably a token of his appreciation. She always made sure he was up in time for work, and she even did his laundry.
Before he stepped out the door to begin his weekend festivities, Thomas kissed his grandmother goodbye and said he'd be back later. Friday night, Saturday, Sunday passed. Irene and Mike waited to see their grandson walk back through the front door. On Monday, November 1st, 1993...
The owner of an apartment complex at 24 Bradley Street in Saco noticed a cutlass still sitting in a parking spot in his lot. It hadn't moved since the night of October 29th, and it didn't belong to any of the tenants. As he went to get a closer look at the vehicle, he realized the doors were unlocked and the windows were down. The man rifled through a few items in the car to see if he could find anything to point him to an owner.
That's when he found an ID badge belonging to Thomas Napier. Police arrived to process the abandoned vehicle, and as they began to inventory the contents of the car, they realized that the stereo was missing. Officers contacted Mike and Irene Baker, who still hadn't heard from their grandson.
When they learned that the brand new stereo was missing from Thomas' prized 1987 Cutlass, their stomachs dropped. As Mike Baker told the Bangor Daily News, quote, I knew then that something bad had happened. He wouldn't have gone off and left his car like that, unquote. With no word from the 22-year-old and the suspicious state of his vehicle,
Thomas Napier was officially reported missing on November 3rd, 1993. State police began their investigation into Thomas Napier's whereabouts and started to piece together his movements on the evening of October 29th, 1993.
Jill Higgins reported for the Portland Press-Herald that after Thomas left his grandparents' house that night, he stopped into a friend's house nearby and then left to meet another friend, a man named Rob Lang, who he planned to spend the evening with. He had at least $400 in his pocket, reportedly overtime pay from his job. Rob and Thomas left Lyman in separate cars.
both swinging into the mobile mart in Biddeford to grab some Michelob Light and Rolling Rock before landing at party number one of the evening in town. Around 10:30 p.m., Thomas decided he wanted to head to a second party in Saco, the next town over, and he wanted Rob to join him. Thomas didn't tell him anything specific about the party, who would be there, where it was hosted,
But it didn't matter because Rob said he had to work in the morning, so he waved Thomas off to check out the party on his own. It was the last time Rob saw his friend, Thomas Napier. Police continued to follow up on conversations with Thomas' friends to learn anything they could about the night of October 29th.
They located witnesses who said they remembered seeing a man matching Thomas' description stumbling away from Thomas' car around 3 a.m. Another reported that Thomas may have been in a fight that night. With who, and about what, is not publicly reported. Saco River weaves between both Saco and Biddeford, separating the two towns where Thomas was known to be that night.
The river would not have been a far walk from where his car was found abandoned in a parking lot. So, one week after Thomas disappeared, state police divers took to the cold waters of the Saco, spending hours searching the muck of the riverbed and focusing their attention near Cataract Dam.
The Press Herald reported that Thomas Napier's parents, Jim and Kathy, as well as his grandfather, Mike, and friend, Rob Lang, stood on the riverbanks, awaiting any word of discoveries made in the current. But the search revealed nothing. Meanwhile, Thomas's grandparents, Irene and Mike, began a search of their own.
Weeks passed without any developments, and so Mike searched the shoulders of Route 5 and Saco himself until snow made it impossible. According to Bangor Daily News, Irene studied up on investigative practices by watching Rescue 911 and Unsolved Mysteries on TV. Police searched the Saco River for a second time on January 6, 1994. That, too, was unproductive.
Mainstate police never said why they were focused on the Saco River. On February 9, 1994, three full months after the last sighting of Thomas, police told his family that there was very little hope of finding him alive, but refused to elaborate on any developments in the investigation and if they had any suspects.
At that point, state police weren't calling the case anything more than a disappearance. Irene told the Bangor Daily News, "...I'm as certain as I am of sitting here that he's not alive anymore. If Tommy were alive and knew the things that were going on, he wouldn't put us through this."
On February 20th, 1994, Eric Lagerstorm was scanning the water and banks of the Saco River. He kept watch over the grounds of Main Energy Recovery Company, and during a routine check of the area near the incinerator, he discovered the body of a man floating face down in the water. Police retrieved the body and later confirmed the identity as 22-year-old Thomas Napier.
An autopsy labeled his cause of death as asphyxia by drowning. He showed no other signs of trauma. At the time, Maine State Police maintained that his death was suspicious. However, they did not initially classify it as a homicide. Lieutenant Michael P. Harriman told the Bangor Daily News, "...why he wound up in the river is part of the investigation."
But the answer to that question still evades police to this day. In fact, not a single answer has been revealed in the nearly 30 years since Thomas disappeared. Why end this man's life? And most importantly, who is responsible? Following the discovery of Thomas' body in the Saco River, his family grew frustrated with police.
They felt that his case wasn't getting the attention it deserved, that Thomas was falling down the list of priorities for detectives. His grandfather, Mike Baker, is quoted by the Bangor Daily News saying, I'll tell you, this is a sick state when the police don't want to do anything about it, unquote.
However, police countered that accusation by saying they were continuing to follow up on leads and speak with potential witnesses in the case. For his grandparents, they feared that their grandson had gotten wrapped up in the drug underworld, that perhaps he was killed to keep him quiet.
Other theories bounced around in the media included Thomas being thrown into the river as the result of that rumored fight that he got into at the apartment complex. Others wondered if it was an accident based on the report that a man was seen stumbling away from Thomas' car at 3 a.m. on the night of his disappearance, apparently drunk.
That witness report, though, has not been proven to be accurate, at least not in the source material I was able to access. The autopsy reportedly found that he had less than a beer in his system. In 1994, police called the death suspicious, but it was not officially classified as a homicide. A year later, in 1995, the case was still labeled a suspicious death.
It's unclear when or why the classification changed. The reporting and source material around this case is just so limited. But as of today, Thomas Napier's name is on the Maine State Police list of 75 unsolved homicides. At some point, information revealed in the investigation had to point to something more than a suspicious death.
When and why did his case change from a suspicious death investigation to then being listed on the Maine State Police unsolved homicides list? And then there are the other questions like, who stole his car stereo and was it ever recovered? Was he in a fight that night and with who? Who did he see in Saco at the Bradley Street apartment complex? A 2014 report in the Portland Press-Herald says suspects, plural, were interviewed.
What did police learn from these individuals? The questions just continue to swirl. The biggest one: What happened to Thomas Napier? If the amount of press coverage is any indication of the attention that Thomas Napier's disappearance and death received, it's not a lot.
Just a few articles mention his name after 1995, an article here and there on the anniversary of his disappearance regurgitating the same information that's always been shared about his case. Then in 2016, Thomas' parents renewed the media's attention and discussed new information that they knew about the case.
In 2016, WGME News 13 in Portland spoke to Thomas' parents, Kathy and Jim Napier. They were firm in their assertions. Someone killed their son. And they believe Maine State Police know exactly who is responsible. Jim and Kathy explained that although their son had turned his path around after release from jail,
The friends who pulled him into a life of trouble and drugs were still hanging out in the peripherals of his life. They claim that Dalmas may have told the group that he was contemplating turning them in for their crimes. According to Jim Napier, quote, they threatened him and said, if you go near anybody, we'll kill you. And we think that's what happened. Unquote.
As far as the Napiers know, police interviewed several suspects and they report that the state police know who was responsible for their son's death. But the evidence, that's another thing. They don't have the evidence to prove it. As is the case in so many unsolved homicides. It relies on people talking. Another year passed in 2021.
Making it 28 years since Thomas Napier left his grandparents' home in Lyman, Maine, dressed to the nines in his new outfit, ready for a night out with friends. For the Napiers and Bakers, it's been 28 years without their son and grandson. That's a long time to wait for answers. And with each year that passes, it seems that the attention on the case fades even more.
The light shining on Thomas Napier's life is becoming dim, and we cannot let it go out completely. Thomas and his family deserve answers. If you have any information about what happened to Thomas Napier,
please contact Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit at 1-800-228-0857 or 207-657-3030. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Source material for this case and others is listed at darkdowneast.com.
You can follow along on Instagram at darkdowneast. And as always, find more cases, more stories to follow, and more families to support at darkdowneast.com. Now through the end of 2021, I'll be sharing information about missing and unidentified persons in New England. It is my goal to bring attention to these cases in hopes of bringing these humans home to the people who love and miss them.
On November 4th, 2020, police found the body of a deceased male inside an unsecured residence in Andover, Maine. According to Namus, he was circumstantially identified as Edward Tubias, but attempts to locate family to confirm his identity by DNA analysis were unsuccessful.
The deceased is estimated around 70 to 80 years old, 5 feet 4 inches tall, and about 200 pounds. If you believe you know Edward Tubias, or someone who does, please contact the Oxford County Sheriff's Office at 207-743-9554. This information is listed at darkdowneast.com slash missing.
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 murder cases. I'm not about to let their names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
