GUILFORD, Maine — The manhunt for Robert Burton, who is wanted for murder in connection with the death of his ex-girlfriend in Parkman in early June, is about to become the longest in Maine history, according to state police records.
The search for Burton entered its 66th day Sunday. Only one manhunt in modern times lasted as long.
The search for a Canadian draft dodger who shot well-known Maine guide Wesley Porter of Patten at a camp at Webster Lake in 1943 also lasted 66 days. The search for “The phantom of the Allagash” has been the longest manhunt in Maine history for more than seven decades, Stephen McCausland, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman, said last week.
“Felled by three bullets from the gun of an unknown assailant as he stood in the twilight near the state forest camp at Webster Lake last night, Wesley F. Porter, 47-year-old Patten guide, died early this morning, some five hours after the shooting,” a Bangor Daily News article that ran on the front page of the June 5-6, 1943, weekend edition reported. “[Piscataquis County] Deputy Sheriff David Knowles and State Trooper James Mealey, who were flown to the scene of the shooting in a state forestry plane, conducted a search yesterday for Porter’s as yet unidentified assailant, but had made no arrest at a late hour last night.”
Porter was shot June 3,1943, while leading a group of three Massachusetts men on a fishing trip in the northwest corner of Baxter State Park.
“Porter’s assailant was reported to have fled into the deep woods after the shooting,” the 1943 Bangor Daily story states.
Porter was at the rural camp cleaning up after dinner when the visiting fishermen left camp to investigate a sound, thinking it was a porcupine but later learning from police it was an armed Canadian hermit. They heard three shots and returned to camp and found the mortally wounded Porter, “with three bullet wounds to the head,” the Bangor Daily story states.
“Using the state and Great Northern Paper Co.’s telephone line to contact Greenville, some 100 miles away, the Massachusetts men called for help and Dr. F.J. Pritham was flown to Webster Lake in a state forestry plane,” it states. “Dr. Pritham remained at Webster Lake all night and returned to Greenville at dawn. He reported that Porter died at about 12:20 a.m.”
Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office and the Maine State Police took the lead on the investigation, and the state’s Civil Air Patrol, State Forestry Department, Inland Fish and Game Department, guides and groups of civilians assisted in the search.
“Woodsman Sought in Slaying Fatally Shot by Posse” read the Bangor Daily News headline Aug. 9, 1943, after Arthur “Chub” Foster, a close friend of Porter, and Porter’s 16-year-old son, Clinton Porter, caught up with the wanted man a day earlier.
Chub shot Alphonse Morency, 32, of Sainte-Sabine, Quebec, in the right thigh in the morning of Aug. 8, 1943, and then he and the teenager attempted to carry the injured man out of the wilderness. Wardens flying over spotted them and got Morency to a hospital in Greenville where he died at 4 p.m. that day.
“Deputy Sheriff David Knowlton said the woodsman, who spoke only French, told an interpreter that has been in the woods since June 1942 because he was afraid of being drafted,” the Aug. 9, 1943, article states.
Before he died, Morency told law enforcement that he broke into camps for food and clothing, including the warden’s jacket he was wearing, and admitted taking a shotgun and shells from one camp after he ran out of ammunition for his own weapon, which he left in exchange.
Morency told investigators he would shoot into the air around structures he found, and if no one responded he would go in and look for something to eat, drink or wear.
He admitted he had been near Webster Lake earlier that summer and he did encounter people.
“I fired to the side of two men close to a camp,” he is quoted as saying in “The Great North Woods Mystery,” a story in the February 1944 edition of True Detective pulp magazine. “I know I didn’t hit them but they ran in the directions of my shots. There were talking, excited talking, so I immediately continued on. If I hit someone else I didn’t know it.”
That shot is the one that police believe killed Porter, who was survived by a wife and seven children. Shotgun shells found at the rural camp matched those found on Morency.
Clinton Porter died July 20, but his children remember his stories about how their grandfather was murdered by “the phantom of the forest,” as Morency was called in the True Detective story, 72 years ago.
“It was up in the [Allagash] lakes where they got him,” Reginald “Reggie” Porter of Patten said Friday.
Morency kept breaking into camps, so those pursuing him knew the general direction he was heading.
“They figured it was probably him,” Porter said. “He kept tracking north.”
“My dad and Chub staked out an old tote road” between the Third Musquacook Lake and the Fourth Musquacook Lake, he said. Morency just walked out of the woods in front of them carrying ax, a shotgun and a backpack.
“He started to raise the shotgun and Chub shot him in the leg,” said Porter, who followed his father and grandfather’s footsteps when he also became a Maine guide. “The fellow was so weak by then he just didn’t survive.”
Searchers enlisted bloodhounds in the search for Morency, who was nicknamed “Buckshot Pete” in some media accounts of the historic two-month manhunt, just like they have in the search for Burton. The Canadian told police he took the trail he was on hoping to escape the dogs that had nearly caught up with him the night before.
Search dogs and a bloodhound have been used in the search for Burton, 38, who is also known as Robert G. Elliot. He is facing a murder charge in connection with the homicide of Stephanie Ginn Gebo, a single mother of two, whose body was discovered in her Parkman home June 5. Piscataquis County Sheriff John Goggin said she was shot to death, after Burton broke into her home while her children slept upstairs.
The manhunt, which has been concentrated in southern Piscataquis County where Burton grew up, has involved hundreds of law enforcement personnel from several agencies in Maine and from out of state.
A group of 15 agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who came to Maine June 20 to assist state police, have returned home, but “FBI Agents that are assigned to the Bangor Office are still assisting and continue to offer up advice of lessons learned in the most recent manhunts in New York and Pennsylvania,” Maine State Police Lt. Mark Brooks said in a Sunday email. “In addition, the FBI continues to assist with assets and tools used in those manhunts.”
Ginn Gebo had ended her relationship with Burton a week before her death, and died the day after his probation for previous domestic violence crimes expired. Burton has a lengthy criminal record that includes more than 10 years in prison for domestic violence crimes in 2002, that ended with a 12-day manhunt. Staying in secluded camps that he broke into, Burton managed to elude police until he was captured at an abandoned camp in Willimantic.
Police believe he is still in the area and have investigated several camp break-ins they have tied to him. Lt. Col. Robert Williams, chief of the Maine State Police, said recently investigators were trying to graph the camp burglaries in hopes of tracking Burton’s route of travel.
The last confirmed sighting of Burton was July 6 in Guilford.